Saturday/Sunday, September 5-6: We left Yosemite Saturday morning and took it easy on the drive out. Thankfully we did not have any break issues this time. We were also glad to be on the way out instead of in the almost constant stream of cars coming into the park for the holiday weekend. There was a detour in the town of Mariposa for a parade so we pulled into a business parking lot to take a break. First I had to move out of Jim’s way for the location he was trying to park in and then another motor home came in from the other direction and honked at me to get out the way so I moved to the other side of the parking lot. The driver of the other RV got out and apologized for honking at me. I couldn’t believe that she said she was by herself - driving a approximately 36 foot motor home with a tow vehicle behind! She was frazzled by the mountain road driving coming out of Yosemite and the detour on top of that and just needed to get off the road for a few minutes. We decided this would be a good time to get lunch and let some of the traffic clear.

We stopped in the city of Merced at a Walmart to replenish some groceries. As we were walking back to the camper Jim noticed something hanging from below that was not supposed be there. If was a torsion bar mount for smoothing the sway. We could drive it to our campground 15 miles away but it would need to be fixed before we went much further.

Once Jim was able to assess the damage and formulate a plan we headed to Tractor Supply and Home Depot for some supplies. Just the Saturday night out I was looking for :-) - but I felt right at home. We did find another Black Bear Diner nearby so that is getting to be our Saturday night (almost) regular night on the town.

Jim thought he would be working at the repair job for a good part of the day Sunday so he got right on it (or under it as the case would be) in the morning. It was certainly an answer to prayer that all went smoothly and he was able to complete the repair by 10:00 in the morning. Because a welder was not available the next best option was to, as Jim put it “brace the brace with a brace.”

Since we had some extra time available we headed out to the Castle Air Museum nearby. It turned out to be a good day to stop there because they were having a special event for the holiday weekend and had many of the planes open for touring and Air Force volunteers explaining the significance of the planes on display (over 60 of them).

Near the end of our tour of the air museum we came across what surely must be a new development in aircraft technology ... Jim said he has never seen this one before ... (lol)

The day was getting very hot by the time we left so our next stop was an air conditioned mall to stroll around for awhile.

Once back to the campground it was time to take care of the overflowing laundry hamper once again and get reservations in place for our next stop. We had decided that we should not drive the motor home into Sequoia National Park so I needed to make a few adjustments to our plans.