Day: 76
Date: 17/06
City: Mammoth Lakes, California
Miles ridden: 226
Cumulative miles: 6333

 

This morning we packed the car, turned the Spot on and started moving again. Even though this was ‘only’ in the car, it felt good.  After a while we stopped for fresh Strawberries, this time we bought the big punnet ,since we had space in the car.

We stopped at the entrance of the Yosemite National Park just to take a couple of pictures.

When we left the car, we notice how hot it was outside. We had climate control in the car and it had kept the temperature around 25 degrees, so we didn’t notice how the temperature increased during the day (it was in the high nineties).

On the way to the Yosemite Valley, we came across a couple of beaches, with this weather and lunch time, we stopped at Sentinel Beach for lunch and a swim. Well Sigrid had a swim. My arm was a good excuse, I could only put my feed into the, uhm, ‘fresh’ water. (It was freezing!)

After that we had some lunch in a shady spot at the beach, the view was just great.

After sitting on the beach for a while, we went back to the car park and continued to the visitor centre. We had a look at a film about the history and the nice spots of the Yosemite Park, then we had a look at the exhibition about the park. There we found a sign of a Pika, the same animal that Simon saw on his Mt. Everest trip.

We discovered that the waterfalls were not far away, so we walked to the waterfalls. It was a nice walk, but it was reasonably warm. Arriving at the bottom of the falls, there was the option to have a swim. The left picture is the lower part of the fall, the small colourful dots at the bottom are people J, and the right one is the top of the fall. It is possible to hike to the top within a day.

Sigrid didn’t bring her bathers with her, and somehow I got into trouble for this 😉
After a nice stroll back to the car, we were heading off to Mammoth Lakes. We left the park through the Tioga Pass, which was the pass that Wombat and Val were excited about, and they are right. It is a really beautiful pass, with great views back into Yosemite Valley, and crystal clear lakes appearing out of nowhere

and polished granite cliff faces.

We decided not to stop at every outlook, since the outlooks were on the opposite side of the road. The road was very curvy and there was no visibility ~ if a car or truck was approaching on the opposite site there was no way to see it. That was the moment when we decided to come back the same way and then take plenty of pictures. In some places there were still patches of snow.

At the parks exit the street descended steeply and the view very much reminded us of the Himalayas in India (on the left hand side there is a bit of the road visible).

This road ended at Mono Lake, what a nice day.