I'm a day behind, I know - and I have LOTS of photos. We've been in Yosemite Park. We stayed Friday night at the Tuolumne Meadows campground and there were too many trees to get the satellite for Internet. A day offline sounded kinda nice anyway, so we didn't try too hard. I read a book, we went for walks and we even attended the Ranger's Fireside talk. She started by reciting the poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee". That's always been a favorite of mine, I even have the book. Maybe I'll memorize it?!


And the view looking back down. This road takes you from around 6,000 feet elevation down by Mono Lake to 9965 at the top in 12 miles. It was suggested that we may want to unhook the Honda and drive separately, but we didn't. We had been over 9,000 foot passes a couple times in Wyoming and did fine. But, this one is a bit longer! We made it fine, but we spent an inordinate amount of time in first gear.



Almost to the top. See the snow?



And, here we are!



It wasn't very far then to the Tuolumne meadows campground, which is probably the only campground along the Tioga road that could accomodate us. You don't see any big rigs up here.



I remember, when I used to go backpacking in these parts, we had to put all our food into one stuff sack, tie a rope on it and throw it over a branch so it hung high enough that a bear couldn't get at it. Well, according to the ranger talk, that's not good enough anymore. The bears have learned how to climb above that branch and then jump down on it to get the bag. In camprounds, you are required to put all your food in these bear proof lockers. If you're backpacking you need to rent a bear proof cannister to take with you. We didn't see any bear, even tho we were told they are at their hungriest right now, getting ready for winter hibernation.



Just across from the campground is Lembert dome - one of the many examples of how glaciers carved the granite into smooth domes.







Then we walked along the Tuolumne river thru the meadows. Nice reflections.






Our destination was the Soda Springs. Water comes out of the ground carbonated!

Saturday morning we got up to 36 degree weather. Brrrrrr. We were at about 8500 feet. The campground was getting ready to close for the winter - we happened to be there on their last weekend. I'm so glad we made it - it was gorgeous. We hoped to stay at a campsite in Yosemite valley, but you need reservations and they were all booked up. So, we decided to drive west outside the park and leave the motorhome there while we take the car back up into the valley for Sunday.

Here's some photos along the way:

Tenaya Lake on a sparklingly beautiful day:



Amazing how they cut this road from the smooth rock face.




Coming back down from that 8500 level to our current 3000 feet is hard on brakes. We could smell them getting hot as we're driving. But, when we had to stop at the park entrance, they made some really wierd noises and then, when Jim pressed on the pedal it went all the way to the floor with no effect! Uh Oh. Not a good feeling ... one of my recurrent nightmares actually. He pumped them a few times and they came back, but we stopped at the first wide spot in the road and sat there for 2 hours while the brakes cooled. They seem fine now, but we will certainly get them checked out at our next stop in civilization.

Here is a map of our last 4 days:

hiya! nice blog. i just came across your site n saw that u must have a wonderful life. from where i come from, there is not much place to travel like u guys. just want to say that im green with envy.