Last Tuesday morning found me up early and packing up the car to head up to Yosemite for 6 days. I hadn't been up that way in probably 10 years....WAY too long. While we meant to leave my house around 10 AM to do the 6-7 hour drive, my friend, who was driving to my house from Calabasas, ran into "Obama traffic," so we didn't get going until 11:30 or so. The plan was to drive to Oakhurst, stay there our first night, and drive into Yosemite early the next morning via the south entrance. However, on the morning of our departure I started looking at the map and realized that what we really should be doing was to go up the 395 through Mammoth Lakes and spending the night near Mono Lake our first night, then driving Tioga Pass early the next day. Sooooooo, in the middle of packing and getting myself ready to go, I did a last minute change of plans by cancelling our hotel in Oakhurst and making a new reservation in Lee Vining for the night at the El Mono Motel. With our plan finally settled, we headed north (and east)! I must say that the drive, for the most part, was a yawn until we arrived in the King's Canyon/eastern Sierra area...which seemingly took a long time! It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere for many hours. We did make several stops along the way to eat a turkey burger (Foster's!) and a really interesting stop at this jerky place in Olancha. It had stickers covering many surfaces and was an interesting place (photo below). We did stop in for some turkey jerky (which was incredible, by the way), and no one was minding the register. We shopped around a bit and still no one. We finally left our money next to the register and started to walk out...just as a guy came walking over from the little diner next door. Yep, that was him...we showed him where we left the money and went on our merry way. Billy joined us for the trip. Sort of an "inside joke," but Billy is a stuffed mountain goat that I got at Glacier National Park a couple of years ago. When I remember, I take him on my travels and photograph him at different locales. I know...corny, but fun :)! Here he is having fun on our drive to Lee Vining.
Here is the interesting jerky place that we stopped at in Olancha. Really delicious turkey jerky, though quite expensive. I must say that the stuffed olives were not as tasty!
Once we finally got out of the middle of central California and started to hit the Sierras, the scenery got much better. The photo below was taken somewhere a bit south of Bishop.
That was about it for photos on our drive to Lee Vining. It got dark soon after the above photo was taken. We made a quick stop at Schat's Bakery in Bishop to pick up a few goodies for the trip and then continued to head north. Once we made it to Lee Vining, we checked into our motel...The El Mono Motel (wish I had taken a photo!) and headed out to dinner at the Whoa Nellie Deli at the Tioga Gas Mart. Really interesting experience eating at a restaurant inside a gas station and mini market. The fish tacos were really quite good, but my friend ordered the lobster taquitos and she thought they were just okay. Anyway, after dinner, we headed back to our little two-bedroom motel room (I had the back room and I had to haul my suitcase over the bed to get it into the room...tight quarters!) and shared a bottle of wine and then went to bed fairly early. We were getting up before dawn the next day to head to Mono Lake, thanks to yours truly who wanted to take some photos of Mono Lake at sunrise. Little did I know what was in store....
The next morning we woke up to my alarm of Cartman singing Poker Face at 5:45 AM...and we were in the car heading to the South Tufa Trail of Mono Lake within 15 minutes.. The thermometer in my car kept reading these crazy low temps, but I was convinced it was wrong. I should have paid more attention. By the time we got to Mono Lake, the temp gauge read 14 degrees. I grabbed all my photo gear and started heading down the trail (photos below are the trail after sunrise, we were going down them in the dark).
Once we got down to the lakeshore, it was just barely starting to get light over the east horizon. I tried to get my camera on the tripod, but the latch was stuck. I tried and tried, but it would not budge. By this time my fingers were absolutely freezing (I only brought a pair of thin knit gloves) and my fingers were rather numb and in PAIN (felt like if I hit them, they would break off), so it was difficult to do anything, let alone deal with a small latch and getting my camera onto the tripod. I knew I should have done this the night before, darn it! I finally gave up on the tripod...live and learn! Okay, so we walk around and take a few photos. I switch lenses a time or two, and now my fingers and toes are both killing me. Seriously...so painful. We were both sort of laughing and crying about how painful it was. Anyway, here are a couple of wide-angle shots just as it was starting to get light.
Haha...below is a photo of my abandoned camera bag and tripod on the trail...I honestly could not hold them any longer, I was so miserably cold!
Most of the photographers (about 10-15) were out at the end of those tufas sticking out in the water that you see in the photo above...it doesn't look nearly as treacherous as it was in the dark! I started to climb out over those tufas, but the trail was very overgrown and the rocks were sharp and my fingers and toes were about to fall off, so I resigned myself to walking along the shore and trying not to freeze to death :). Below are a few photos from the shore. The shot below was sort of the shot I had envisioned, but not exactly....still pretty though.
Here are a few more...
Trail leading to the tufas that I should have been on the other side of (below).
The photo below is actually a pretty cool shot. You can click on it and make it larger (you can do this with any of the photos).
Starting to get lighter now....amazing how the hues changed so quickly.
After we finished along the shoreline.....rather, after we couldn't take the pain any longer, we headed back to the trail. I can't even explain how much we were looking forward to putting our hands in front of those heater vents! Even though the pain was bad, I still stopped to take a few photos along the trail. The mountains on the other side of the lake were particularly beautiful with the sunrise shining on them. Photo below facing toward Mono Lake.
Photo below with the sunrise shining on the Eastern Sierra Mountains away from Mono Lake.
Definitely some otherworldly rock formations here!
Looking back toward Mono Lake after sunrise (below).
All in all, I am not sorry that I did it, but next time I will be much more prepared for that cold....better gloves, double socks, and I will have my camera set-up on the tripod before even attempting to walk out there! After sunrise, we headed back to our motel, got a wonderful hot cup of coffee and packed up the car. Soon, we would head out to Yosemite via Tioga Pass...I could hardly wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment