Monday, May 28, 2007 ;
5:45 AM
27 May
Sun
Arch Rock Entrance -
Bye bye yosemite valley (El Capitan, World's largest granite monolith, waterfalls)
Tioga Rd - (The Tioga Road is a 39-mile (63km) scenic drive through forests and past meadows, lakes, and granite domes from Crane Flat, past Olmsted Point and Tenaya Lake, through Tuolumne Meadows, and on to Tioga Pass, which at 9945 feet (3031m) above sea level is the highest automobile pass in California. There are many turnouts with broad and beautiful vistas.)
red fir forest -
sierran lakes - still with ice on it
roads and meadows - still with snow patches
Olmsted Point - stopped here very long (kids loved climbing the steep rocks). hiked around here for about 1h.
(caught some teens posing funny at the edge of the cliffs too: they kept acting like they wanna jump)
Tenaya Lake - stopped for picnic lunch (dh and ds1 waded in the icy cold waters)
(water so clear and shimmering, we can see everything at the bottom of the lake)
Tuolumne Meadows - so beautiful already (left), even more so with wildflowers in summer (right)
Tioga Pass - farewell to Yosemite NP! we will be back!
Area just out of NP - still very beautiful, cold (see ice on lake) and pristine.
some parts of road going down in steep decline already.
Hit Nevada - endless desert and bumpy roads with huge dips. we felt like we were riding in a rollercoaster!
Road conditions cause slower speed, hence it was already getting dark and we were only at Ely, Nevada, with 4 more hours to go, at least. Hence we decided to stop there for the night.
Turned out there was a nice Chinese restaurant beside the motel we checked into, and we had a great dinner! Our server was a Chinese girl from KL, Malaysia and the restaurant is owned by Chinese from Guangzhou. As always, in areas with few Chinese, we were treated "like family". And so we felt very at home.
Like in Utah, whenever we go to the Chinese restaurant near our house for meals, the boss and his wife always smile and talk to us, paying us extra attention, talking to my kids and so on, in Mandarin. They also ask a lot about us, our family and so on, feeling very intimate with us like that. :-)
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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