Heading back to the country: San Francisco to Fresno

On Friday morning it was time to say goodbye to San Francisco and head southeastward towards Fresno. For a while we had entertained the idea of making Yosemite National Park a station on our way, but the weather forecast soon made it clear that this was not a good idea: rainfall in lower elevations would most certainly translate to snow higher up. Instead, we decided to drive up to Sequoia National Monument the next day before our next major destination, Death Valley. 

We left San Francisco in the rain, happy to have had reasonably good weather for our excursions the day before. The rural landscape was pleasing to the eye: green and hilly with cattle, here and there fruit orchards already, the whole eastern horizon taken over by the snow-capped peaks of Yosemite. Water holes between the hills, quite likely formed recently after some more extensive and very welcome rains, were filled with ducks dabbling for food. 

Eager to stretch our legs after sitting in the car for a few hours we were looking for a place to walk. At the town visitor centre in Madera we were directed towards Millerton Lake and Friant where we’d find walking trails along the San Joaquin River. This proved to be just right for an early evening walk. 

A well set up and maintained system of partly paved, partly graveled or sandy trails, frequented by joggers, walkers and cyclists, made for a pleasant walk through the spring landscape. Trees just leafing out, almost man-high lupine shrubs covered in purplish-blue blossoms, the river meandering between trees whose branches hung low into the water, here and there one of the big old oaks I have come to like so much soon made me forget the heavier traffic we had encountered on the way out of San Francisco. 

We hadn’t walked long when a movement beside the trail caught our eye. Fascinated we watched how a brown hairy spider made its way across the sandy embankment. With great smoothness it set its legs in a kind of forward-sideward moonwalk. While it wasn’t huge there could be little doubt that this was a tarantula, an assumption that was confirmed by a passing cyclist. Had we been in any danger? Reading up on tarantulas later I found that, while poisonous, their bites are not lethal, though an anaphylactic reaction similar to that to bee venom could occur. 

After a short half hour-drive we arrived in Fresno where we were going to spend the night, with plans for driving up to King's Canyon/Sequoia National Monument the next morning.