Thursday, April 12th - A Minor Change of Plans

Our plan for the past several months was to go to a private campground near Yosemite National Park today and stay for seven days. Yesterday afternoon, I was perusing literature on the entire Yosemite area. The private campground was northwest of the northwestern entrance to the park. That meant that to drive the backroads on the southern side of the area would require day trips of 200-250 miles each. I read about the Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino near Coarsegold, CA, on the southern end of the interesting area. I checked and this casino definitely allowed overnight RV parking. So, here we go - to Coarsegold.

Enroute, we stopped at the Mariposa Wine Company in Madera for a little tasting. Most of the wines were were quite enjoyable and we ended up purchasing a blended Pinot Noir. After the tasting, we went "pistachio tasting". That's right! Pistachio tasting. Hickory smoked pistachios, jalapeno pistachios, red chili pepper pistachios and severl others. We ended up buying five pounds of ordinary roasted, salted pistachios.

We got to the casino around 3pm and got a primo parking spot, in a corner of the large parking area, overlooking the valley below. We both took a nap and then we headed to the "trough" at the casino...the California Market Buffet. Now we are back in the coach watching Survivor - Fiji. Come on Yao-Man!

TV watching is interesting. With our satellite, we get CBS, NBC, ABC & Fox from both Atlanta AND San Francisco. So, if we start watching early, we see all the prime-time shows before 8:00pm California time. If we go out we see them at the regular time, 8:00pm - 11:00pm.