Sportsmobile West

This morning we woke up bright and early at Walmart. Last night, about an hour outside of Fresno we were both exhausted. It was time to pull over. A little known secret outside of the trucking/RVing community is that Walmart parking lots welcome overnight sleepers. They tend to have surveillance cameras and security patrols and are some of the safest places for a snooze!
We got down to Fresno well rested, just in time for our 8:30 appointment at Sportsmobile West. The show room is a Sportsmobile Mecca. We got the full tour of the facility and saw every gizmo, gadget and cool add-on for the vans. We even got to see the construction of 17 bright red, super high clearance Sportsmobile vans that are on their way to Quatar. Apparently in appreciation for the millions of barrels of oil that they are lucky enough to have bubbling under their sands, Quatar has built a state-of-the-art, emergency, first responder force for international natural disasters. When tsunamis or cyclones hit anywhere in the world, the Quatar force is first on the scene with $25,000 dogs that can find life under 20 feet of wreckage.
These vans stood 2 feet taller than Frank, had 12 gear transmissions and were just generally the toughest vehicles we’d ever seen. All for the low low price of $160,000 per van. That oil is paying off!
After Frank got his day in the Sportsmobile Spa, we were back on the road up the twisty roads to Yosemite. It’s the last National Park on our agenda and we’ll explore as much as we can tomorrow be tofore heading home from our whirlwind month long adventure. It’s time to return winterlogged Jackson.