#420 Mariposa Fairgrounds, 06/08/2022

This stop also has a little nostalgia. We stopped at Mariposa Fairgrounds the second time we went to Yosemite. We had not fully looked at the road situation when we chose Mariposa. I chose it mostly because we stayed there once before and it was near Yosemite, at least in my mind. When it’s time to do it again I will stay on the big road. We stayed at Mariposa for several nights because there were a few parts of my UV filtration system that had not been perfected yet. When I was backing into our site I ran over and crushed a homemade PVC yard sprinkler riser. I spoke to the host and mentioned I would buy some parts at the hardware store and fix it. He said you don’t have to but thanks.

I had hoped to be living off creek water once I got to the Yosemite boondock on Evergreen Road. Mariposa is where the hardware stores are and I needed to take advantage of all that while I was near a small town. I spent some time doing on the UV and we also checked out a place we had seen as a potential camp host site. It was a roundhouse used by the native people and you didn't have to do that much.

You just had to have a presence there to keep people from bothering it. On the way, I saw some signs that said the road is dangerous when icing. I spoke to the people at the hardware store and asked what's the weather like here. They said it's 25 in the winter with snow and ice and in the summer it's 104. We decided not to go look at the roundhouse job because that kind of weather does not suit me. We felt kind of lucky while we were there because it was around 80 to 84 and that was very comfortable but soon it would be 90 plus.

I’ve noticed that ever since I had a little trouble with the guy that lived next to us having his music too loud I don't like music when it's coming from other people that’s really loud. It just grates at me. One night I was sitting there and it just was loud and thumpy with the deep base and it just brought back a bunch of memories. I was like oh you arse holes why have you got to be like this oh my god. I decided after about half an hour of this I would just kind of ride around and find out who the horrible person was. I rode around in the truck for a while and I couldn't quite find the culprit. Then I kind of went over to a central area that's like a day-use area with a gymnasium. I saw young people and these really pretty dresses and the bunch of guys in tuxedos and they were dancing a bit and I realized that they were having a prom. Well, I felt like an idiot complaining and whining about who was playing all this loud music. It's just a bunch of people having good clean fun. Boy, that felt like the dumbest guy ever.

How dare they have music all thumpity thump and all this dancing and stuff and having fun. God, I felt so stupid.

I finished by UV system and worked on the sprinkler system parts that I had destroyed and by the third day, we were ready to go.

While I was in Mariposa I saw a sign that said anything over 30 feet long do not take this road and it kind of spooked me so then I went to the hardware store and asked them and they didn't know but pointed me to the visitors center. I went in and asked questions and they seemed to I think that it was because there was a bridge that is hard to negotiate in a big rig.

I realized we were two or three feet longer now but we had gone that way once to El Portal and I don't remember dying, but it spooked me so we did not take that route. One option would be to go like 30 miles way out of the way back to the big road. hwy101, that didn't appeal to me. I took the road less traveled which was not really suggested by the semi-truck map I use but I thought it might be okay. The big road to and through Groveland is not suggested for big rigs either but I've already done it in the other 2008 rig.

The road was okay for a while but after a while, this was a very treacherous road. It starts out pretty normal and then it's just one very spooky curvy switch back after another going downhill uphill with no guardrails. You just hope for the best and it's just fairly terrifying. We white-knuckled our way through it and finally when we got to the good road which takes you up the hill to Groveland. It's also a twisty turny road but nothing compared to what we just finished and we said from now on we will go the long way.

Next, we won't go to Mariposa at all because it doesn't benefit us as much as I thought. It was just nostalgia. We'll be better off staying on the big road all the way till you get to the Groveland turn-off.

We got up the Groveland hill made it to our Evergreen boondock and settled in for the evening. I could go into some detail as it was difficult to ever get level there but that's the next story.

5007 Fairgrounds Rd, Mariposa, CA 95338