Hello, earlier this month we visited the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Click here for a slide show.
SierraWe flew into the Tahoe/Reno airport where our good friends Kim and Gregg from San Francisco met us in their silver Jetta. The four of us piled in and drove an hour to Lake Tahoe for a long-weekend birthday celebration. Gregg and I celebrated our recent 50th birthdays and Kim also had a birthday to commemorate! The entire trip was new ground for Geri and I as we'd never been to Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake or Yosemite National Park before.
The weather in Tahoe was cold and even snowing as we arrived! This first part of the trip was really more about relationships than location, although we did go on a great hike once it warmed up a little. Lake Tahoe is big and beautiful, and an unbelievable area from so many different views.
Geri and I decided to tack on an extra week after Gregg and Kim headed back to S.F. We drove south and explored Mono Lake and Yosemite. Our first stop was at one of the most atmospheric gold mining ghost towns in the West named Bodie. In the 1880s, Bodie was the second largest city in California after San Francisco! In it's heyday, it boasted three breweries, and some 60 saloons and dance halls. It also had a well-earned reputation as the raunchiest and most lawless mining camp in the West, where almost every day ended in a shootout on Main Street while the firehouse bell rung once for every year of a murdered man's life, seemed never to stop sounding.
Bodie is now a California State Park and a very peaceful place on a warm, fall day.
I had so much fun there, they had to ask me to leave at 5 p.m. - closing time! I am beginning to act my age closing state historical sites rather than bars!
From Bodie we drove over a tough dirt road to the town of Lee Vining on the edge of Mono Lake with its blue expanse and 60 square miles reflecting the snow-capped Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. The salty alkaline lake is most known for the strange, sandcastle-like tufa towers that were formed underwater, where calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through the carbonate-rich lake water. The calcium and the carbonate combine as limestone, slowly growing into the weird formations that resemble giant coral. The towers became more visible as Los Angeles drained away the waters that flow into the lake between 1940 and the 1990s. Now the lake is slowly expected to refill to its natural levels in about 20 years.
We arrived at the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve's South Tufa area as the sun set in the west and the moon was rising in the east. We weren't alone as about 30 other photographers from around the world lined the shoreline with cameras on tripods. This scene played out again the next morning at sunrise with the moon setting in the West over the eastern Sierra Nevadas.
After breakfast at the Whoa Nellie Deli, we drove into Yosemite National Park traveling over Tioga Pass at almost 10,000 feet in elevation, taking in some of Yosemite's most breathtaking high-country scenery. Tioga Road is the highest paved road in California!
We decided to stop and hike up to Lembert Dome, about a 4-mile roundtrip that was well worth the time and effort. The park is full of granite domes, the most famous is Half Dome - which we decided not to climb. It's a 12-hour hike including the last part which uses cables to get to the top. The cables were pulled up in anticipation of winter the day we arrived.
In the minds of many, Yosemite National Park is Yosemite Valley, a four-square-mile nugget of stupendous landscape that never fails to impress. This valley not only lives up to your expectations but exceeds them! From the first views of El Capitan's 3,000 vertical foot wall of rock, past Yosemite and Bridalveil Falls, Half Dome greets you with a smile as you drive beside the Merced River. The river and the falls were dried up at this time of year, but I can imagine how the springtime runoff would be a sight to see.
We drove past Yosemite Village to the end of the road at the Ahwahnee Hotel, built in 1927. This six-story grand European-style hotel has attracted royalty, heads of state and movie stars. From there we hiked up to Mirror Lake at the base of Half Dome about four miles round trip, even though the lake was also dry. As the sun was setting, bathing Half Dome in pink alpine glow, we headed for our hotel just outside the parks south entrance.
Over the next few days we explored the valley and the south end of the park including Glacier Point, which provides one of the best views of the valley. We also did a couple of cool hikes to Taft Point and Sentinel Dome. Taft Point is known for its valley rim view and the fissures that cut down the steep edges. It is not a comfortable place if you are afraid of heights! Sentinel Dome was a much more mellow hike and a good spot for lunch.
I should note that the park service was doing a controlled burn, so the sky was more than a little hazy, which made some pictures not so interesting and others became more interesting.
No trip to Yosemite would be complete without a stop at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Village, where you can study and buy some of the best landscape photography created by Ansel Adams and others who've specialized in photographing Yosemite and the western states.
Cheers, Kent
Labels: Bodie, California, Mono Lake, Mountains, personal, Sierra, Sierra Nevada, Travel, Yosemite National Park
