Family on Lembert DomeOne of the things we love most about living in Sonoma County – besides the wineries, incredible coastline, near perfect weather, and on an on – is its proximity to Yosemite and the Eastern Sierra, one of our favorite areas in the country.

As a result, rather than taking long multi-week RV trips just to get to somewhere interesting, we find ourselves hitting the road for much shorter jaunts. This particular trip started as a result of a conversation with the boys about how great it was to have such a premier rock climbing destination as Yosemite reachable for them on a weekend.

Being the wonderful parents we are, we surprised them by going through the agony of booking a Yosemite campsite and actually managing to get one in the Valley for a week in July. When I presented what I thought would be wonderful news, they said, oh that’s great, but it’s really too hot to climb in the Valley during the summer – the place to be is up in Tuolumne Meadows.

Ok, they weren’t going to stump me. When the next booking month opened up on Recreation.gov, we nabbed not one, but two, campsites in Tuolumne Meadows, beginning the day after our reservation in the Valley was over. Now they were excited.

So Herb and I spent a week in the Valley – where the boys and Celeste joined us on the weekend – followed by 4 days up in Tuolumne Meadows, where we all regrouped for another weekend. From there Herb and I forged on alone, repeating some of our favorite Eastern Sierra activities – kayaking Mono Lake, soaking in Travertine Hot Springs, and beaching at Secret Cove on Lake Tahoe.

Since we go to Yosemite and the Eastern Sierra quite frequently, I questioned whether it even made sense to document these trips anymore, as they can get quite repetitive for our readers, but then I remembered that we originally created this website for ourselves, as a means of documenting our trips and storing our photos – which is becoming increasingly important as we age and struggle to remember what we even did yesterday.

So, if you are looking for information on Yosemite, you will find it on our website in many places.

Yosemite Valley:
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/yosemite-valley
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/yosemite-national-park-0
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/yosemite-national-park-1

Tuolumne Meadows, Mono Lake, and the Eastern Sierra (north of Mono Lake):
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/tuolumne-meadows-mono-lake
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/mono-lake
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/eastern-Sierra-north-mono-lake

South Lake Tahoe
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/lake-tahoe-0
http://www.cross-country-trips.com/south-lake-tahoe-area

Trust me, there are more, but I think these will do for a start.