Yosemite Day Two: Tioga Pass to Yosemite Valley

On day two of our trip to Yosemite, we left the El Mono Motel in Lee Vining in the early morning and headed up Tioga Pass to the east entrance of Yosemite (we actually did Mono Lake at sunrise, but that was SO early that I thought it belonged in day one and was in a previous post). Since my last posting was very chatty :), I am going to keep this one a bit simpler. Before we arrived at the Tioga Pass entrance into Yosemite, we came across beautiful Ellery Lake, pictured below.

After a quick photo stop here at Ellery Lake, we continued on to the Yosemite Park entrance. Here's Billy entering the park. As you can see, he is very excited. The best part of me taking Billy with us was that my travel companion thought I was absolutely insane, BUT, by the end of the trip, she was talking to him too :)! Hee-Hee.

Tioga Pass Entrance

After crossing into the park, the first stop we made was here at Lembert Dome. A lot of people climb this dome, but we did not. We wanted to get to a couple of other hikes we had in mind.

First glimpse of Tenaya Lake (below). You can barely see it in between all the granite mountains.

Our first hike was here at beautiful Tenaya Lake, right off Tioga Road. It was a gorgeous day, very clear and crisp. We hiked down a short trail and walked all around the shoreline.

There were some cool trees along the shoreline...

A few more shots around the lake.

I was obsessed with this piece of driftwood. I took quite a few shots of it :)

My shadow. Notice all the stuff I have on...haha.

One last shot before continuing our drive down Tioga Road.

Our next stop was at Olmstead Point.

The view was spectacular from here and the sky so so blue! I loved the pattern of the granite rock.

Half Dome from Olmstead Point.

At about this point in our drive, our early morning wake-up for sunrise at Mono Lake was beginning to catch up to us. I remember feeling very sleepy. We made a quick stop here at this meadow (maybe a lake in spring?) before moving on.

We made one last stop before arriving in Yosemite Valley. I am not sure the name of this point, but it was on Big Oak Flat Road just as you were getting to the Valley. You could see Half Dome from a different perspective here and it had a sign with all the different faces of Half Dome. Pretty cool!

This brought us to around 2:30 PM. We were tired and hungry. We headed to our hotel to hopefully check-in and get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we were told that our room was not ready and to come back after 5 PM.. *sigh* I won't get into it, but the front desk guy at Yosemite Lodge at the Falls left MUCH to be desired. Anyway, we went the food court at the lodge...YES, a food court.....so wrong, but I suppose necessary during the very busy summer months. After we ate, we headed back the way we had come in to explore a few places we had seen on the drive in. Our first stop was on the side of the road to take a couple photos of El Capitan...looking magnificent, as always.

Next stop was at Valley View...possibly my favorite view. A beautiful location with the Merced River in front, El Capitan on the left and Cathedral Rocks and Spires on the right.

Here's a shot of just the Merced River and El Cap with lovely fall colors.

Here's a shot of some of the fall foliage along the Valley Road. It was just incredible and I loved driving down this road everyday, if not twice a day!

A stop at beautiful little Fern Spring to take a few photos. Wonderful fall leaves all over!

Next, we made a stop in a lovely little meadow and ran across this historical site. I love that John Muir and President Roosevelt sat around a campfire right where I was standing. Nice!

A couple more shots of the fall foliage along the Valley Road (not sure that is the official name, but that is what I am calling it).

Next, we did a walk around the Swinging Bridge area. Really a beautiful place to walk..too bad we were so darned tired. Another shot of El Capitan from a little different perspective.

A fence shot from the Swinging Bridge Trail.

Looking back toward Swinging Bridge...which you can see in the photo below if you look closely.

There were fields of this beautiful golden grass...wonderful!

Haha...another fence shot. I seem to like fences.

After walking around the Swinging Bridge area, we still had about 30 minutes before we could check-in, so we made a stop at Cook's Meadow. I am sure glad we did. This is looking west into the sun, but I still liked the photograph.

Half Dome from Cook's Meadow, with the famous "Ansel Adams Tree" in the middle.

Oh! Look who wandered into my shot?? So cool! Thank you deer!

Well, that brings us to the end of day two. We went back to the hotel, checked in, and called it a night. Until tomorrow....

Yosemite Day One: Drive to Lee Vining and Mono Lake

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!

My Local Escape

Over the past few weeks since I got back from Santa Fe, I have been way too busy and stressed out with work (such a dirty word sometimes)! One of the local places that I feel extremely inspired by is the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. I am coming to love and appreciate this incredible place more and more these days. It seems that the more time I spend here exploring, the more I am in awe of it. It is like being in a different world...my escape.

I think this is a place that I would like to work on preserving. This is going to be my New Year's goal (not calling it a resolution because I don't believe in them...they are usually left by the wayside a month or two into the new year)...volunteering in any way that I can to help this wild and incredible place...whether it be picking up trash, creating a website, doing some gardening work...whatever!

I thought I would share a few recent photographs from my weekly visits to this magical world.

Palm trees at dusk.

A bench to the sky.

One of the many beautiful wetlands paths.

A lone walker on the "swamp" trail. This area is a bit off the beaten path and it looks like a swamp. You can usually spot Ospreys and Turkey Vultures over here. This is also where the "Egret Convention" took place in a few of the photos later in this post.

A very misty dusk at the wetlands. Swamp Trail.

The moon between tree branches.

A gorgeous Blue Heron that flew down and landed about eight feet in front of me.

A Brown Pelican friend waiting on the trail for me :)

A beautiful Forester's Tern.

A Snowy Egret with windswept hair.

A Seagull!

At Tern at dusk with street lights.

A convention of Egrets. I had never seen so many in one place before. They just kept flying down and joining the feast. If you notice the one Egret in the middle is all fluffed up. She kept chasing the other Egrets away and making lots of noise too. She must have been having a bad day!

An Egret family with an adopted child.

Ms. Fluffy (Crabby?)

Marbled Godwit.

A large group of Egrets waiting on dinner. This is the area that I call the Feeding Ground. There are almost always some sort of interesting birds over here looking for food. I think the fish come in from the ocean near here.

A hovering Brown Pelican.

Another Egret. I loved the colors on this one.

Yakkity Tern.

A Seagull in flight (monochrome).

Last Monday, I decided to take off early from work and instead of going to yoga like I usually do, I headed to the wetlands. There was an extremely thick marine layer all during my almsot three hour walk. I was assuming that I would not see a sunset and was heading back to the bridge, when all of a sudden I turned around and saw this incredible sight! Perfect!