we're off!

Hooray!  It took us an extra day to get out, but we finally managed it.  We made a quick stop at the MOM for a ton of instant noodles, then we were off to our first real stop: Railtown State Historic Park, where they have a 40 minute steam train ride.  Charli even wore her girl train engineer outfit, even though it says the size is 18 months.

We got there in time for the last ride of the day, and it was baking hot.  My fragile San Francisco self could barely handle it.  We rode in the open train cars, because as the train lady told us, the closed cars were hotter than a biscuit.  Buster really didn't like the train whistle as we were waiting on the platform, but he was OK with it while we were on the train.  It turned out the train is not actually a steam train, and the route is just a 6 mile out and back ride through not tremendously picturesque areas, but it isn't bad, and a lot of movies were made in the area (there's not a lot of stuff around to indicate what century it is) and that's interesting.  There was also a lot of gold mining done in the area, and we found out the interesting fact that the Sutter's Mill gold mine is supposed to reopen next year.  If you wait long enough, everything comes back around!

They also had a real live roundhouse, so we went to see that, and all the fancy steam trains are actually in the roundhouse,

We will be staying in some random RV park outside of Yosemite tonight, because several of the campgrounds inside the park are first come first serve for sites, meaning you can't make reservations for them.  They take longer to fill up on the weekdays, so we figure we'll camp outside one night, then go straight in the next morning and get a campsite.  Then Nina and Bella are going to join us for a couple of days of camping!  How exciting - we can hardly wait!