Day 22 - Travel and a 12.5% grade

Friday, July 1, 2016

Posted from: Visalia, CA

Miles driven: 204

Total trip miles: 3,970

I believe I mentioned before that the hill leading to the driveway we have been parked in all week had a 12.5% grade. I have a phone app that tells me angles (geek!). And the drive way is at a 90% angle turn before it completely flattens out at the bottom. So we had a bit of a geometry story problem on our hands. 

We waited to leave a little later in case it took us awhile to hook up and tackle the 90% angle turn ( not to mention the hill). Once we began, anyone at the bottom of the hill, which was a dead end with 5 or 6 other houses, we're stuck until we got up the hill. We didn't want to block anyone from getting to work. 

In the end I guess we were worried about nothing. Matt navigated the turn with only one reposition, and once he knew he had made the turn he just gunned it and went up the hill without stopping. The whole thing from hitching up to parking at the top took about five minutes. Good grief this guy is good...well the truck might have helped a little too. 

The actual plan was for him to pull it out and back up straight down the street before attempting the hill. I was supposed to pick up the leveling ramps (two 4x6 boards) and throw them into the side compartment. So when he just went up the hill I was left standing there in the driveway looking at these boards. So I picked them up and hauled them up the hill. Someone was going to have to. It was great exercise. Makes me wonder why I stopped crossfit. 

Here is a picture of me standing 20 steps down the hill. 

Matt continues to be stunned by the double speed limits. It was slow going in places. 

Here we were imagining our truck making faces and sticking it's tounge out like Mack the semi does in the Cars movie. (For those keeping score at home, this may be the tenth Cars movie reference.)

It was a reasonable three hours to our next campground outside of Sequoia National Park. We had a wake up call when we arrived to temperatures in the 100's. Quite different than Long Beach's perfect 70-80 degree weather. 

I was a little concerned about this campground. This is the only campground we are staying at on this trip that had really bad online reviews. It's a long story about how we ended up here, but can be summed up with: 4th of July weekend. So far, everything seems just fine. I think there are some folks who live here full time and they may have had a family for awhile that disturbed the peace. Maybe they left, or quieted down, but so far so good.