On to Pinnacles

September 24, 2015       

Where are my humans?  Sometimes, I look out the windows and wait for my humans.  When I see them coming, I jump down and run to the door.  I know they want to let ME-OWT!  Me-OWT!  ME-OWT!

Whenever we stay at Rick and Sue's, my walk is down their half mile driveway, across the road and onto the Thoroughbred Loop, which is home to beautiful horse properties on rolling hills.  I have seen deer and wild turkeys here on my numerous walks.  Today, no wildlife, but it is still as pretty as ever.

When I get back, Rudy is really wanting outside.  He cannot be outside here unsupervised as the coyotes are acting like they own the place.  Harl, the caretaker of the property is doing some preventative actions, but no need to risk our little beast.  And since Sue has to get ready for her trip, I wanted to get to the big house to visit, so Rudy had to hang inside.  I did take him out for a bit yesterday.  He did not know what to make of the horses, and the horses stared at him like he was an alien from another planet!

After a great morning visit, we readied Hannah and decided to go to Pinnacles National Monument, for one last adventure.  Pinnacles is between I5 and hwy 101 in the middle of nowhere south of Salinas.  We head down hwy 49 to I80 west.  Ugh, road construction.  Those k-rails look awfully close!  Then I5 south.  When we get to Stockton (hi Lynn Wheldon, too bad we didn't know we would be here or we would have arranged a visit), anyhow, in Stockton, EVERY truck that was operating in California was on this stretch of the road.  If that wasn't bad enough, there was more road construction, so we were stuck between a huge semi and a k-rail.  I was holding my breath as if that would make us skinnier!  I was also leaning to the inside of the truck, as if that would make any difference!

We ran the gauntlet and stopped for lunch at Santa Nella, then headed west on 33 to 152.  And around through Hollister south.  The hills are brown and thirsty, but occasionally, the grapevines and wineries pop up.

Can you believe it is 97 degrees?  We haven't seen that in...  how long?  too long to remember!  I know... wah wah wah!

We got a site at the Pinnacles campground.  Deer are cruising through eating human leftovers.  Wild turkeys too.  Pinnacles is a recent addition to the National Park System.  There are two entrances, one east, one west.  I asked Spouse which one had the campground.  He said west.  Good thing I called as the east is where the campground is.  There is no road all the way through the park, so if we were to come in at the west entrance, we would have had to drive down a gazillion miles, then over, then back up.  Even though it may only be a few miles as the crow flies, driving miles would probably close to 100 miles!