Day 9

Day 9 I noticed that a bracket on the trailer frame that is designed to prevent damage to the plumbing in scrape situations had broken apart in the near rollover. Henrie who is quite the mechanic luckily had a welder and was nice enough to fix it for me. We had a nice lazy morning and ate breakfast and went shopping for supplies for the next few days as we make our way on to Yosemite. We were running a bit behind schedule and towing was a bear. I15 was closed for construction, so we had to detour around much of downtown Vegas on side streets. We emerged from Vegas to cross the Mojave desert in 102 heat on long grades with a 20-30 mph headwind. As you can imagine, the Sequoia was drinking gasoline like a drunken sailors rum. The drive crossed more high desert into California, but changed abruptly to miles and miles of farmland as we entered the San Joaquin Valley. At one point we were under 5mpg. We stopped for gas and dinner but booked it as far as the driving goes today. Mummy also bought a large box of cherries from some road side vendors. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at our campsite in Yosemite, it was dark and it is very difficult to back the trailer into a tiny spot in the dark, with scattered posts and concrete hazards. We finally got it done, but as we were unhooking (the road is a narrow one lane deal so the car blocks it as you back in) some foreigner pulled up in his car and started screaming that he needed to get by. He looked like some type of Euro and was shrimpy. I glared at him and told him “its camping dude, calm down” He flipped out and ran into the woods to whatever campsite he was trying to get to and left his car in the street. He then came back a second time and continued his rant. Damn foreigners. We were all tired and frustrated and my fuse on this guy was almost up. He managed to squeeze his car by and drove on his way. There are no hookups at this campsite and we will need to be diligent about conserving water and battery.