Thursday, July 13th, 2023

Starting mileage: 8300, Distance travelled: 160

Miles walked: 3.5 (Brady and Dad), 1 (all)

If Susan and Patti thought they were done with us in the morning, they were wrong. We abandoned the idea of spending the day in San Francisco, given Laura’s illness. Instead, we took her to urgent care to find she indeed had strep throat, as suspected. We left our van at Susan and Patti’s and used their place as a home base for the day, even borrowing their car to get around. David and Brady managed to make a day out of it, exploring downtown Berkeley on foot, visiting a huge board game store, and walking through the university campus. Sadly, a Japanese import video game store was just out of reach for the second time this trip. Brady and Dad promised themselves they would find one before the end of the trip. Meanwhile, Susan took Laura to urgent care, got her antibiotics and let her have a rest.

We headed out of the city just before 3pm, antibiotics onboard for Laura and a tank full of gas. We travelled more windy, narrow roads deep into the Sierra Nevadas. Unlike several of the other roads we’ve traveled, this one had very few guardrails and made Susan incredibly nervous. It went on for miles and David found it more difficult than the Going to the Sun Road due to the length and the number of sharp turns. Little did he know this was just foreshadowing our driving conditions over the next 48 hours. We arrived at our campground in Groveland, CA just after 7pm and everyone got right to bed since we had to get up early for our day in Yosemite. Cell service was non-existent yet again, so we were incommunicado for two more days.