We woke up and rolled up 395 from Bishop CA to Tioga Pass, the "back" entrance to Yosemite. Beautiful morning in Bishop - I could wake up to this view.

image

On the road out of Bishop

image

Approaching highway 120

image

The approach up to Tioga Pass, the actual entrance to the park.

image

image

There were tons of rock climbers out and about in Yosemite. Must have something to do with the abundance of rocks....

image

The alpine meadows at the top were beautiful. I can't remember the name exactly but it was something like tumor-lunger....pretty sure that wasn't it, though.

image

Roving over towards Yosemite Valley - in this picture you can see El Capitan and the Half Dome off in the distance.

image

Then there's this guy standing with the Bridal Veil falls for a backdrop.
image

And the biggest rock of all, El Capitan. 3 days to climb it. Think about it - climb all day, strap yourself to the side and try to get some sleep. I don't have a fear of heights but my fear of falling off the side of a mountain I'm strapped to would probably prevent me from doing this.
image

From Tioga Pass where we entered the park everything is down, in elevation. After we left the park, as we got lower, it got hotter. Lower. Hotter. We bottomed out somewhere around 2000 feet elevation. It looked like it hadn't rained in several years. Everything was dry, crackly, brown...no wonder California catches on fire every time someone forgets to snuff out their cigarrette. Whoops, forgot, California is a no-smoking state. Must be all the PO'd ex-smokers setting the darn wildfires then.

Tried to catch the brownness in this pic. Look over to the left where the grass is dead and the trees are gasping.

image

We rode through the historic mining region - Angels Camp, Calaveras County, etc. There were fake concrete frogs everywhere celebrating the Mark Twain story (there was also a sign for a cabin that was purportedly his). I tell you, if there were any frogs around here they dried up and blew away years ago. No jumping going on here. 104 degrees on one bank display. 101 on another.

We picked up 88 headed back towards Nevada, and back up in elevation. Coming out of Pine Grove at 2500 feet and 104 degrees, if we didn't get some relief quick we were going to have to find a place to hole up. Amazing what half an hour and 5000 feet of elevation will do for you. At 7000 and 8000 feet, the temperature was pleasant and the ride was enjoyable again.

image

We rode past Silver Lake, Cagles lake, and into Carson City NV where we called it a long, hot, eventful day.