Saturday morning, we drove north from June Lake to the little town of Lee Vining, turning onto Route 120 and the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. The drive from Lee Vining over Tioga Pass into Yosemite is spectacular, although once again I had to grip Molly tightly in the irrational fear that she would fall out of the van. Sandeep told her to yelp if she couldn't breathe but she was very tolerant. The road clings to the edge of a STEEP hillside, with evidence of rock slides above the road and below it (and suspicious gray scrapes across the road as well). I wondered if the park rangers have a rock plow with which they can push aside fallen rock just like snow. The paved shoulder of the road is about a foot wide, with either a little sand or a steep drop-off beyond that. Eeek!
The east entrance road passes through Tuolumne Meadows, a high, flat area with sparse brown and yellow grasses. We passed a lovely mountain lake and ascended, through rocky areas and evergreen forests, to a viewpoint overlooking Yosemite Valley. A nice man took our photograph; you can see me sitting slightly in front of the wall and clinging to it, tightly. It appears that I have a slight fear of heights... I did admire the view into the valley, though, which was very beautiful.
We admired the giant stone El Capitan, and walked the short path up to Bridalveil Falls. For Pooja and Hugh, who are planning a visit to Yosemite next weekend, we are happy to report that there is a little bit of water in Bridalveil Falls! We also were pleased to learn that Molly was allowed on the walk to the falls, as dogs are allowed on paved trails in the park. She did stray, ever so slightly, from the pavement to lay in Bridalveil Creek...happy pup. The popular sights, unfortunately, were very crowded. Sandeep said, "This looks like Central Park!" as we negotiated our way around people and vehicles everywhere, and he was right.
We did have a lovely, somewhat solitary walk (down a paved path and across stone, which is so much like pavement, really, that our little dog came with us again...), from Olmsted Point. The views of the valley and of the striking Half Dome were spectacular.
We saw a man driving, on a relatively flat road, with the funniest expression on his face. Sandeep reproduced it beautifully, with perhaps just a bit of exaggeration, in the photograph above. We hoped he would be leaving the park through a less dramatically steep route than the one we had followed!
We, on the other hand, did take same beautiful and dog-gripping route leaving the park as we had while entering. We stopped in Lee Vining for groceries, and at the lovely and strange Mono Lake just north of town to eat dinner and watch the sun beginning to set. Mono Lake is extremely alkaline and salty, and limestone deposits, called tufa, protrude from the lake in odd shapes.
We drove across the Nevada border on Routes 167 and 359, passing through some very empty sagebrush plains bordered by mountains, before arriving at Hawthorne, Nevada, where we camped for the night.
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