Every summer I write a variety of blogs featuring the slogan "Friday Night Halfway". It's my practice of driving a few hours on Friday night and sleeping in a hotel to get a leg up on adventuring on Saturday. Well, it's not quite summer yet... and it's not quite evening yet, either. Thus today we did Friday Morning ALL THE WAY.

I took the day off from work today. I've now caught up for working the weekend at a trade show a few weeks ago; I still need to catch up for traveling for work last Sunday. Well, I didn't quite take the whole day off. I worked from 7am until about 8:45. Then I took the day off.

A few weeks ago we booked a hotel room for tonight in Oakhurst. It's a gateway town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. We're not going all the way up into the Sierra Nevada; it's too snowy. There are a few waterfall hikes right around Oakhurst we enjoy. They're in the 3,000 - 4,000' elevation range, so we figured they'd be fine to visit at this time of year.

We set off from home at 9:47am. Yes, I checked the time when we rolled out of the garage. I like to know these things. I'd hoped we'd leave by 9:15— and we probably could have, except neither of us packed our stuff last night. We were too tired. But it turned out okay because we could throw things together this morning. It's not like it's a long trip; we're just going for 2 days/1 night, and it's just for hiking.

Keep reading: Rain & Shine on the Road Trip

It's Friday night... and again it's Friday Night Halfway! Last Friday found us in Auburn, halfway to a hike in the Grouse Lakes Basin of Tahoe National Forest. Tonight we're in Jackson, halfway to a hike tomorrow along the Pacific Crest Trail above the Kit Carson Pass.

Jackson is a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It's a crossroads town, at the junction of highways 88 and 49. Route 88 is one of the passes over the Sierra Nevada. Route 49 is "the 49er trail" connecting a bunch of towns in the foothills that sprang up in the California Gold Rush that hit its peak in 1849 following the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill the year before. Sutter's Mill is/was about 35 miles north of here, in Coloma, though in the gold rush years gold was discovered nearby here, too. In fact there are at least a dozen historical gold mines within a few miles of Jackson. But those are not why we're here. For us it's just Friday Night Halfway.

Not Stuck in Lodi Again

The drive out to Jackson starts like a drive to Yosemite. We leave the Bay Area via Livermore on I-580 the hook the short I-205 east toward Manteca. Yes, Manteca, the Spanish word for lard; lard as in rendered pig fat. But instead of going all the way to Manteca as we would en route to Yosemite, we turn north on I-5 to Stockton and cross over to Route 99 north. On Route 99 we drive north a few miles to Lodi to exit onto Route 88, which angles northeast up into the Sierra foothills.

Lodi is always an amusing town to drive through. We can't so much as think about the town without also thinking about the classic hard-luck song named for it.


Thankfully we're not stuck in Lodi tonight, or even hanging our hats there. I mean, we could have chosen a hotel there. We actually did, once, ten years ago. Going back would have to be just for the LOLz, though, as Lodi is about as dreary in real life as it's made out to be in song. ...Not that Jackson is worlds apart. It's a hardscrabble town whose best days were upwards of 150 years ago. Stately Victorian buildings built as banks with Gold Rush money are today biker bars popular with 50+ year old rebels in MAGA hats. But at least Jackson's 30 minutes closer to where we're going hiking tomorrow.

Here it is Friday night, in the summer, and once again we're halfway to somewhere else. 🎵 Woah, we're halfway there! 🎵

In a 1:1 this afternoon with my boss we were discussing weekend plans, and he said he finds it inspiring how much Hawk and I travel on weekends. I explained to him this Friday Night Halfway travel technique I started using years ago. The idea is simple: Drive a few hours on Friday night and stay in a hotel in some nondescript location to get a head start on going somewhere, typically in the mountains, Saturday. Use the extra time to do a fun thing on Saturday and get all the way home Saturday night so Sunday is an open day at home for rest, chores, etc.

If it seems like I've blogged Friday Night Halfway a lot recently it's because we've done it a lot recently— 4 times this summer, starting with one in June, and now 3 times in 3 weeks. This evening's trip is just in time, too, as it was just this morning that I finished blogging about these recent trips. 😂

So, where are we tonight? We're in Auburn, one of our usual suspects for Friday Night Halfway. It's a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada along I-80. We like it because it gives us a good jumping-off point for adventures up in the mountains.

Sometimes Auburn hotels get pricey, though, so maybe half the time we come through here we also stay down in the Central Valley, hanging our hats for the night in or around Sacramento instead. Tonight our usual haunt, the Holiday Inn, was expensive, but I found a good rate at a Best Western. We'll see what it's like staying at a lower-rung property... without elite status. 😱😂

The drive up to Auburn this evening was rough. I'm glad we were able to leave early. What would've been a 2.5 hour drive without traffic took closer to 4 hours of driving. Adding in stops for dinner and ice cream (yay!) we arrived at the hotel just before 9pm after leaving home at 4.

Tomorrow we'll drive up to the Grouse Lakes Basin, another common haunt. We visit that area for hiking generally at least once a year, sometimes twice. Why keep going back? So. Many. Lakes. It can still feel a bit repetitive, so we mix it up with different hiking routes. This time we're thinking of doing a peak climb we've never done before. We should be able to see lots of lakes from up there! And staying tonight in Auburn means we should have only an hour or so pleasant drive to the trail in the morning.

It's Friday night and time for another episode of Friday Night Halfway. Yes, we did a Friday Night Halfway just last Friday, driving to Redding. I haven't even finished blogging about the hiking we did on that trip, and already we're going on another one. But not back to Redding. Main reason: it's too smoky still from the Park Fire. 😧 🥵 Tonight we're in Fresno.

Fresno. Yes, Fresno. The 5th largest city in California. But we're not here because of its size or its significance... Fresno being widely known for its slogan, "No, really, we're now the 5th largest city in California." 🤣 We're here because it's halfway to somewhere else.

Somewhere else in this case is the Sierra National Forest and the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, it's really called the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. No, the lakes are not really dinky. I mean, some of them certainly are, but that's not why they have that name. It's a person's name. Yes, really. 🤣

This Friday Night Halfway is similar to a stay in Fresno 12 months ago. We're staying in a different hotel this time, so the last umpteen miles of the trip were the same. And it was only about 156 miles total from home. The Friday Night to Fresno Travelog I wrote last time still mostly pertains. At least this time we were able to get an early start from home, rolling out of our garage at 3:40pm, so were were all tucked away in our hotel room by 9pm after multiple stops for food, gas, and dessert, plus traffic delays getting out of the Bay Area.

What comes after Friday Night Halfway? Well, Saturday Morning the Rest of the Way, of course! After we drove to Chowchilla on Friday night we finished up the drive to our true destination Saturday morning. The first of our true destinations, that is. Angel Falls.



This is just the first of many waterfalls at Angel Falls, a view we enjoyed seemingly just steps after starting the hike. More to come soon!

Getting to Angel Falls was easy this morning by virtual of having done our "Friday Night Halfway" thing. We intended to get up early, perhaps even at 6:30am, but set an alarm for 7 instead and then swatted the snooze button until almost 8. But that was okay because we didn't have hours to drive. We rolled from the hotel at 8:30am after pooh-pooing the crummy breakfast offered there.

We arrived in the town of Oakhurst about 75 minutes later. It was 48 miles of driving through the Central Valley at the Sierra foothills, plus a stop for gas in Coarsegold, where gas was ridiculously cheap (by California levels).

I mentioned last night that Chowchilla is small (by California levels) at 19,000 population. Oakhurst is even smaller, at about 13,000. But Oakhurst is a gateway town. Gateway towns are kind of like gateway drugs, except they're generally good for your health, not destructive. They're gateways to outdoor adventure!

In Oakhurst we stopped for breakfast at Jack in the Box. ...Yeah, it's low-brow, but Jack in Oakhurst is kind of a ritual for us. We also visited a knickknack shop in town but didn't buy anything because it was all junk. (Eating crummy food and shopping crummy junk stores are typical gateway-town activities, BTW.) After that we made the easy 15 minute drive up past Bass Lake to the trailhead for Angel Falls. We started the hike at 11am.

Woohoo! It's Friday night, the start of a three-day holiday weekend, and tonight we're driving to... nowhere.

...No, we're not driving to a place that feels like the middle of nowhere. We're not even driving to a spot halfway between hither and yon. We are driving literally nowhere. We're staying home.

It's kind of a bummer to stay home on a three day holiday weekend. It's kind of a point of pride for me to take advantage of the meager time off from work we get in the US by going somewhere on holiday weekends, even if it's only a driving trip of a few hours each way. But two things conspired against us getting away from home this weekend.

First, we're tired. We were out three weekends in April and another two already in May. And we've got two trips planned in June already, with at least one not long after that in July. Suddenly, "Let's just stay home" sounds like a not-unreasonable way to spend a long weekend.

Second, hotels are expensive. I mean, "Let's just stay home" wasn't actually our top choice. We looked at going to a few places we could drive to. But the costs of staying anywhere halfway nice this weekend are through the roof. Since we didn't feel strongly about the need to get out this weekend we didn't care to pay $300+ per night to do so.

So, what will we do instead? Well, one of my ideas was "Lounge around by the pool" at least one day, but unseasonably cool weather right now makes that a no-go unless I want to lounge in long pants and a light jacket rather than swim trunks and a tropical shirt. We're talking about taking a long drive out to a hike in remote Wine Country tomorrow. It's a worthy idea; we'll see if we get up early enough in the morning to make it a reality.

Friday, 25 Aug 2026, 10pm. Fresno, California.

It's Friday night and we're in Fresno. Yes, that means it's Friday Night Halfway! Because why the hell else would anybody want to leave Silicon Valley to go to Fresno. 🤣


Maybe I shouldn't bust too hard on Fresno. It is the state's fifth most populous city. With a population of 550,000 it's ahead of Sacramento, the state capital; and Oakland. It's behind fourth-place San Francisco. But as basically an overgrown farm town iit is... miles away from San Francisco.

Speaking of miles, the drive this evening was about 168 miles. The map shows a timing estimate of 2:38 at off times. With traffic it took us about 30 minutes longer. Plus another 50-60 minutes for a dinner stop. All in, we were in our hotel by 10pm. Oh, and yeah, technically we're not in Fresno. We're in the adjoining town of Clovis, which I guess could be described as "Just as dismal as Fresno, but with even less to do."

Our plan for Saturday is to head east, up into the Sierra Nevada mountains. We've picked out a pair of waterfall trails to hike. With this head start from Friday Night Halfway we should have time to hike both of them!

Update: Keep reading in:

• Five Things en route to Fresno
• After Friday Night Halfway it's... Saturday the Rest of the Way!

Last night we drove to Folsom, California, halfway to Bassi Falls. Yes, that's the same as we did 6 weeks ago. We're doing it again! Why? Because six weeks ago we had to bail out early when Hawk got hurt. Plus, Bassi Falls is beautiful. It doesn't hurt to see it twice. And we'll finish the rest of the trip, with a few other hikes, we intended to do 6 weeks ago.

How much the same is it? Well, we started from the same place (we live there, duh), we're going to the same trailhead to start the day Saturday, and Friday night we stayed at the same hotel— almost. Instead of the Residence Inn we're at the Courtyard. They're both Marriotts and they're literally next to each other in the parking lot.



The drive out to Folsom Friday night wasn't bad. Driving 142 miles took us 3:15 including a stop for dinner of about 45 minutes. Oh, and speaking of the same trip as 6 weeks ago... we ate dinner at the same restaurant as last time. 😂 Though this time we left home 10-15 minutes later and made better time driving. We lost only 15-20 minutes to traffic. Thus we arrived 15 minutes earlier than last time.

You'll note driving 142 miles last night, with 202 shown as the total distance in the map above, is more than halfway. Yeah, that's because "Woooooah, we're halfway there!" is lyrical and "Wooooah we're 70.3% rounded up of the way there!" is not.

But back to things that are the same, or not. Last night after checking in we considered going to the same ice cream shop as last time. It was good! But this time I didn't quite feel like having ice cream; I wanted a beer or cocktail instead. Well, right next door to the Courtyard is a BevMo! It's, like, 50 feet from the hotel's side entrance. I grabbed a couple large cans of Negra Modelo (one for Friday night, one for Saturday) and took them back to the room to relax.

Final difference: we're getting an earlier leave on things this morning. We rolled from the hotel just after 7:30am and are now eating breakfast nearby— at the same restaurant (Del Taco) as last time! I hope that leaves us enough time to enjoy lots of outdoors stuff today. Of course, we'll have to avoid injuries while at it!

Folsom, California. A suburb of Sacramento. It's where you go if you've shot a man in Reno, according to a famous Johnny Cash song... or, in our case, when we're staying halfway between hither and yon on a Friday night.



Yon this trip is Bassi Falls, where we decided a few days ago we'd like to hike tomorrow. The drive is almost 4 hours best case, though, plus extra time for stops. Could we do that, there and back, all on Saturday? ...Yes, but it'd be a tough day. We'd want to be up by 6 and rolling by 7, only to start the hike a noon and then still have to drive home 5 hours (including a stop for dinner) afterward. We wouldn't have time/energy to double- or triple- up with other short hikes in the area, and we'd still get home exhausted anyway.

Enter Friday Night Halfway. Instead of spending 5 hours on the road tomorrow morning we knock out 3 or 3.5 tonight (including stops) and have a gentle 1 hour 15 minutes tomorrow. We start the hike earlier and with more energy, we have more time and energy to tack on an additional short hike or two in the area, and we get home not as wrecked. Oh, and we don't have to get up at 0600.

Who's Got the Folsom Blues? Not Us!

We made good time getting out of the house this afternoon. Hawk worked from home, which made things easier. We started packing at about 5:15 and were rolling at ten of six. We stopped for dinner along the way and checked in to our hotel in Folsom at 9:30.

Yeah, there was traffic along the way. It cost us about 45 minutes vs. best case conditions. But we were able to be more mellow about it because we knew we'd still get there at a completely reasonable hour (versus, say, having to drive until midnight+).

Once we got to our room we faced a choice. We could slip out to the hot tub for a soak before it closed at 10pm... or ice cream. There's a fantastic home-made ice cream shop two blocks from the hotel, and it's open 'til midnight. Hmm, hot tub or ice cream, hot tub or ice cream? Ice cream. It was hardly even a question. 😅🍦🤤

Now we're back at our hotel room for the night. We're winding down though we may also stay up a bit late. It's not like we have to get up at 0600! And when we do get up, we've got a full kitchen in our hotel suite so we could cook a big breakfast if we really wanted. But instead we'll settle for some meat, cheese, crackers, and bread we packed from home in a cold bag.

This evening we left town on a long weekend vacation. Hawk has Monday off for Juneteenth, and I took a day of PTO so we could make a three-day weekend trip in the warm summer weather (cough, cough, surprisingly cold today).

We often begin these trips with Friday Night Halfway, a technique of driving for a few hours Friday evening and another few Saturday morning to make the travel more comfortable, but tonight we've gone All The Way. We're bedding down in Lee Vining, California, at the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, 230 miles from home. It's 1:30am Saturday already.

Here are a few notes about the trip this evening:

6:25pm, Leaving home: Woohoo, the trip is afoot! ...Actually it's not a foot, it's a car trip. 🤣 Though the point of it is to get some time on foot in the Eastern Sierra the next three days. We wanted to leave a smidge earlier but we had to pack after work, having not had the time/energy to do it last night. We've both had a lot of long workdays this week.

7:50pm, Tracy: Tracy is a shitty little town/ex-urb on the edge of the Central Valley. 1980s pop stars who failed to manage their riches well live here. We're not here to hit up M.C. Hammer for an autograph, though; we're stopping for dinner.

8:50pm, Manteca: We've stopped for gas at this small town in the middle of the Central Valley. Yes, the name means lard in Spanish. Guess what they do here. It costs $110 to fill the tank on our SUV. ...And that's with the cheapest gas in the area, at Costco, $5.899/gal.

9:30pm, Oakdale: Another small town in the Central Valley. We think of it fondly as we've made many Friday Night Halfway stops here on the way to Yosemite. Tonight, though, we're going all the way... and this isn't even the halfway point. We stop in Oakdale for ice cream at Coldstone.

East of Oakdale is a decision point. We can turn one way to cross the mountains via the Tioga Pass; or another to cross the Sonora Pass. All afternoon and evening both Google Maps and Apple Maps have been routing us over the Sonora Pass instead of the Tioga Pass. It's a longer route.

While waiting in line for ice cream we check our maps again.We try forcing them to give us a driving time via Tioga; they won't. We figure they've got to be marking some kind of closure or obstacle in Yosemite. Indeed, as we zoom in, we see they're marking a closure in Tuolumne Meadow. There's a bridge out, apparently. Except we don't believe it. Yosemite's web page says nothing about a road closure. The state highway status page shows no closure. We even call Yosemite's recorded-info hotline; no closure. Electronic road signs on Highway 120 displaying traveler information about Yosemite say nothing about a road closure. Basically everyone but Google and Apple says Highway 120 is clear. We decide to take our chances.

11pm, Yosemite: Yes, Yosemite National Park. We're driving through Yosemite National Park. At night.

11:12pm, Crane Flat: Not long after entering the park we reach Crane Flat, elev. 6,192'. This is the highest I've been on land in 9 months. And there's still over 3,000 more to go!

11:50pm, Olmstead Point: During the daytime this is the place where amazing views open up on the Tioga Pass road driving east. To the west you can see the famous Half Dome in the distance and Cloud's Rest at nearly 10,000'. To the east is beautiful Tenaya Lake. We pull over in the empty parking lot and hop out to see what we can see. We can't see anything. Well, we can see the stars in the sky; that's it. The moon's not up over the Sierra Crest to light the landscape below. And it's cold out here.

Midnight, Tenaya Lake: "PAVEMENT ENDS" a sign states. LOLWUT? Apparently the park and/or the state have decided this summer is a great time to grind up 8 miles of HIghway 120 in Yosemite's high country. The road is compacted dirt and gravel for the next several miles. It'll take more than that to slow our roll, though. We're in a capable 4x4. As we climb the next hill toward Tioga Pass I see a gray wolf dart across the dirt road.

12:20am, Tioga Pass: We top out the Tioga Pass at 9,945'. This is the highest I've been on land in nearly 4 years. From here it's all downhill. Literally downhill. We're at nearly 10,000', and from here it's an epic drive down the steep Eastern face of the Sierra Sevada mountains. But we won't see it this trip since it's night.

12:40am, Lee Vining: Wow, the drive down from the Tioga Pass was faster than we expected. I guess that's the benefit of doing it in the dark; there's no temptation to go slow or stop to see things, because you can't see things. 🤣 We check into a hotel for the night. "Check in" is a rather grand term, though, as all we did was reach in the mailbox and grab the envelope with our name on it and keys inside. The family that runs this small hotel went to bed hours ago. For us, though, we'll be up for at least another hour.