Driving Through the Sierra Nevada

I have some catching up to do!  Monday afternoon I started my drive from Death Valley to Yosemite.  Whereas Death Valley has the lowest point in the continental U.S., about an hour outside the park, you reach Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S.  I’m sure I saw the mountain as I drove but, to be honest, I don’t know which peak it was.   Here are a couple of pictures of mountains that may or may not include Mount Whitney:

I next ventured to the area of Mammoth Lakes, where I had intended to visit Devil’s Postpile National Monument, which contains an awesome example of columnar basalt.  Yay geology!

Unfortunately, the park is still under 10 feet of snow, and I couldn’t even get to the entrance road.

The skiing/snowboarding that people were doing instead looked like great fun, but was awfully expensive, and probably not best experienced for the first time alone.  Another time.

My next stop was Mono Lake, a saline lake with these cool formations called tufa towers (limestone deposits).

I then turned onto Tioga Pass, the seasonal road leading to Yosemite.  There weren’t many turnouts to take pictures of the beautiful snowy mountains, but I did find a few:

Once inside Yosemite, I first stopped at Tuolomne Meadows.  I had planned to camp near here, but all the campgrounds on the north side of the park are still closed due to snow (they had a record year of snowpack in the Sierras, by the way).  As you can see, the meadows are in fact almost completely under water due to ongoing snow melt.

I next stopped at Bridalveil Fall.  As I walked to the vista point, I saw many people walking back absolutely drenched.  I assumed these people had gone out of their way to get wet, and I continued up the trail through increasing mist…

I saw the falls and snapped a quick photo…

And then I was drenched from head to toe.

I talked to many frequent Yosemite visitors who said they had never seen the falls with this much force before.

At this point I had planned to say a lot of things about the difficulty of trying to find a place to sleep in Yosemite and what a pain the traffic and shuttle systems are, etc., but I did sleep, and I survived, so we'll just let it be.  It's a beautiful place.