The brief was to find somewhere with a view - the last campsite had the amenities but was little more than a car park. We are due in Yosemite on Thursday so ideally not too far out of the way and in any case Harriet limits us in the length of journey we may make.
So I stared at the map and picked one plausible block of green fifteen miles south of San Jose. It was Henry W Coe State Park.
The unnerving part came when I checked the website. It warned that the road approaching the park was narrow and windy and advised people to 'keep this in mind'. There were no height, length or weight restrictions just the caveat 'if you have had little experience with such roads you may want to reconsider your plans'.
Well it was too late for that - we were off. The only sour note was that Harriet refused to eat her porridge but we thought that was because she had got up late and was not yet hungry enough.
The interstates and the 101 carried us to the outskirts of the park quickly enough but the reason for the warning on the website soon became clear. The road is extremely narrow and climbs very quickly. The views are breathtaking but even I was not too keen to look because if you did you saw how quickly the slope fell away. A wrong move and it would literally take your breath away. It took us about an hour to travel the ten miles to the campsite and it was a great relief to arrive at last.
Now this was a view.
Even though we were 10 miles from a town and a major highway it seemed as if we were alone in the world. All around us were steep inclines - the green bushes more often as not turned out to be the tops of very tall trees on the slope below. Helpfully a sign instructed all vehicles to remain on the road.
Amidst all this beauty though was the continuing problem of Harriet refusing to eat. She is still teething - the bottom molars are fully out but the top ones are still to fully arrive - but a bottle and a half of milk was not good enough.
Then another miracle. We discovered that one of the American jars was very similar to one of her favourites back home. She scoffed the lot. Delighted and determined to push our luck we have her a pack of lunchables - little crackers, slices of cheese and ham. She scoffed the lot of that too.
We were overjoyed and later made a sacrifice to the bear god of that place. To be more precise we had a fire using one of the supplied drums. It was extremely welcome because it had started to get cold, very cold.
It continued to get cold. At night the wind was extremely viscious and we had to bring H into bed with us to keep her warm. We had no hookup so no heating and ended up sleeping dressed. H, who will not normally tolerate a hat, was happy to have her hood up.
In the morning, frozen and still sunburned we set off for Yosemite. What a night but a what a view!
