Please add that data into that section!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gommy
keep an eye out as i will be doing a summary/info thing here soon with things like mileage covered and my thoughts on pluses and minuses for rv'ing and visiting this time of year,[especially for first timers like me]stuff that i've been asked a lot since coming home.
thanks again
We have a section for that kind of data -- [ RoadTrip Costs and Research] and it would be swell if you added it there!
Mark
Another San Fran loop completed
Just thought I'd chime in and add my experience of following in Daves footsteps,
We've just completed our 3week roadtrip which was heavily influenced by Daves loop however we took the motel option and added a few diversions, our route -
02 - 04 San Francisco - Fishermans Wharf, Alcatraz night tour
04 - 06 Mariposa/Yosemite - Stunning B&B and I'll never forget Yosemite.. achingly beautiful
06 - 07 Tonopah - Underestimated time for Tioga Pass, Tenaya Lake is stunning. Found snow near Tuolumne Meadows too... had to press on so no time to hike - big regret. Couldn't find Woah Nellies so ate Nicely's.. good little diner. Arrived late in Tonopah so ate chips and drank in rough saloon bar at Tonopah with great locals.
07 - 09 Springdale/Zion - Angels Landing & Hidden Canyon hikes.. Awesome. Did Valley of Fire on way, ET Hwy, Lil Ale inn at Rachel
09 - 10 Bryce - Beautiful but freezing at sunrise, did Navajo & Queens walk
10 - 11 Torrey - Drive Hanksville & Sth for Muley point, Mokee, Goosenecks & Monument Valley off road loop. Long day but worth every minute.
11 - 12 Page - Antelope Canyon & Horseshoe bend
12 - 13 Grand Canyon - Drive East rim, stay Bright Angel Lodge for sunset
13 - 16 Las Vegas - Call at Seligman for R66. Had blowout on I-40 near Kingman, Jeep ended up in middle scrub of Interstate, very scary. Fit spacesaver & limp Jeep to Vegas airport for replacement. No time at Hoover dam but saw last year.
16 - 17 Death Valley - ATM ate my Debit card at Pahrump - not good day. Artists drive at sunset, Dante's and Zabrieske for sunrise. Swimming at 10pm!
17 - 18 Kern Valley - North to Sequoia, Trial of 100 giants & Pinnacle view
18 - 19 Morro Bay - Good start for Hwy1, beautiful place & great locals
19 - 20 Monterey - Aquarium, vist Carmel, drive Pebble beach
20 - 23 San Francisco - cycle over to Sausalito, eat, drink & reminisce :o)
Even though we had a few disasters along the way we covered just short of 3500miles, there was a few long drives but I was aware of them and we started early, paced ourselves and felt comfortable with the schedule.
The only thing I'd change was our time in Vegas, we spent a week there last year and thought it'd be fun to return since we were passing.. mistake, I hated almost every minute and wished I'd taken a day off our return to San Fran and booked more time in Yosemite and added a day for a visit to Arches NP.
One big mistake I made was that that I fell for the apparently well known upgrade trick at the Dollar desk at SFO - the supervisor guy said he'd upgrade us to a medium SUV, refund my original payment of £300 and just charge me the new price of $670 and I naively trusted him and agreed... signed the new contract, stupidly got nothing in writing about the refund. Therefore my original payment of £300 has yet to be returned and as yet I've no response from Dollar helpdesk, it appears I unwittingly paid an additional $670 for an upgrade.
Now back in the UK I'm surprised how odd it feels being home, we sunk into the nomadic lifestyle very easy and this normality feels weird. I'd better start planning next years trip & sort through the 10gig's worth of pics I took.
Cheers Dave for the inspiration :o)
Those mini-disasters make it a "road trip"
Sorry to hear about the expensive "free upgrade" but enjoyed reading your trip report. That blow-out in the jeep sounds a bit dicey but you certainly saw a lot of beautiful country and did a lot of miles!
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy Las Vegas -- there is a lot of cool stuff here -- both on and off the strip. After nearly nine years living and working here, I have seen about 10% of what there is to find here. (And I publish three articles a week about living here)...
Mark
An incredible hub for daytrips!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ChipButty
This year my heart just wasn't in it, I can't put my finger on why but the majority of the time there I wished I was back on the road.
On your next visit, I suggest you alternate between the pleasures of the Strip and using Las Vegas as road trip hub -- some truly awesome country can be had in day trips. Here are some short range options and here is Grapevine Canyon -- where petroglyphs are in such abundance that they actually appear as graffiti over successive generations! (I regret that I never re-loaded the images -- they are awesome!)
Mark
Excellent, excellent report
Paul,
Very glad to hear that worked out well for you! Thanks for the update!
Mark
I just found this thread...
Great report!
I think I can answer the "shoving the cable car" question.
The motive power for cable cars is a cable (duh) in a slot in the street. The gripman (half of the cable car crew, the conductor being the other) uses a big vise-grip kind of thing to glom onto the cable to start the car in motion, he releases it when stopping.
While the cable is gripped, the car goes about 9-10 miles an hour.
Sometimes, if he releases it in the wrong place, and doesn't have enough momentum to roll forward to a place where the cable is high enough in the slot to be captured, you have two choices:
1) Roll backward (never a good idea)
2) Everybody gets out and shoves the car over the hill
Eventually the car gets to a place where the cable can be gripped again.
I've done the latter, a couple of times!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CalOldBlue
2) Everybody gets out and shoves the car over the hill
Eventually the car gets to a place where the cable can be gripped again.
Don, Great explanation -- yeah, I've had to assist the gripman and others push a car up the hill a bit a couple of times -- it's never far -- but it takes a lot of muscle power!
Mark
Bridge cameras are good enough for most.
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By the way, do you have a map saved of the Denver trip,
There is a map on page 8 [post 73] of the Denver report ,although on checking I did notice one error between 'H' and 'I' that I will have to sort out sometime. From Telluride we continued on 145 to 62 to Ridgway and then south through Ouray and Silverton to Durango on 550, aka 'The Million dolar Highway' which is spectacular !
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Out of curiosity, what type of camera do you use?
For SF and Denver I used a Fuji Finepix S9600 and on our recent trip [Highways of Happiness] I had a Fuji HS20EXR. I like the Fuji as it's probably the closest you can get to a DLSR without the expense and extra lenses, but not necessarily in the end result, the picture. Most good bridge cameras will give you excellent results and the Canon powershot, Nikon coolpix and perhaps the Panasonic Lumix will probably give better results than the Fuji HS20 on Auto mode. The thing I like about the Fuji is it feels like a DLSR to handle and you can have full manual control to compose your shot, the permanent manual zoom [up to 30x] and the ability to manually focus are 2 strong points for me, as most do not offer them and are great for capturing wildlife on the move when speed is important. Most of my photos are straight out of the camera other than perhaps a slight tweak with exposure, which makes me feel happier than creating a picture through a Photoshop program. So it takes learning and experimenting to get reasonable shots out of the Fuji, but somehow keeps me in touch with with 'real' photography like back in the day when we used prints and had one shot to get it right. It's a heavier bulkier camera to carry around than most of them out there and the lighter, easier to use cameras are popular for a reason, so you won't go far wrong with any of those for point and shoot pictures. Features like Panoramic mode, HD video and multi shot [3 captures/one image] with many scene selections and so on, are pretty much standard these days. To summarise, for ease of use and results I would look at Canon, Nikon or Lumix, but if you are looking for more control, have a basic understanding of light metering etc, and are a bit of an oddball like me, you can work to get results from the Fuji. [Now the HS30EXR I believe]
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But do you think a bridge camera will be good enough to capture some of those magic 'moments'?
A decent bridge camera will be good enough, but how good the end results are still largely depend on the operator.
Dave.
