It's been hard every day of this driving portion of our vacation to guess how long a trip is going to take, because unlike driving on 95 at home, here miles rarely corresponds to minutes. In Sequoia & Kings Canyon, we were rarely going over 25 mph and often much slower. When you add in all the stops along the way to take pictures of the views, stretch our legs, and run away from reptiles, what appears on a map to be an hour drive turns into four or five.
Yesterday we found that Yosemite is easier to drive in because the climbs are gradual and through mostly forest rather than being carved into the mountain side. (This is causing a chicken & egg conversation ... do more people go to Yosemite because the roads are more accessible, or did they make the roads more accessible because more people come here? I tend to think the first.) This morning we came across a semi-recently burned section of forest.
News to note: they're not called "controlled burns" anymore because firefighters agree that you can't control fires. They're called "prescribed fires" now. These areas of the forest usually have a fire every 5-15 years, so if it's been more than that the area gets studied to see if a fire would make sense. Crazy, huh? Once we were up at the higher altitudes, evidence of the late snow started showing up.
That's forest-dirt-covered snow I'm standing on! In fact, many of the higher elevation campgrounds still aren't open. The road we took to the meadows wasn't open even a few weeks ago! Talk about a short summer time. One of the scenic viewpoints we stopped at was manned by volunteers that had a telescope pointed at half dome. It was really neat to look through and see the people doing the last section of the climb on the cables. (The route was visible today because we were looking at the mountain from the other direction.) The camera's zoom lens got close, but not close enough to watch the people like we did through the telescope.
(Although if you use photoshop to zoom in, you can see the line of people looking like ants!)
After awhile, we came across possibly my favorite spot of the whole nature-oriented portion of our trip, Tenaya Lake.
I really wished I had packed a swimsuit for the day, because I wanted to go in so badly! Much of the water in Yosemite is too dangerous to get near, but this lake is a popular relatively safe spot for things like swimming and kayaking. Near the lake, we spent a long time watching a group of accomplished mountain climbers climb a mountain. It was really fun to watch, especially the guy who appeared to be part mountain goat!
Finally, at almost the end of the park, we came to Tuolumme Meadows.
I'm thinking the huge amounts of cars & people scared all the wildlife away. We got one last distance shot on our way out of the park.
After our hours spent crisscrossing the park, we relaxed before deciding to hunt down a town with food. Even though our hotel here is nicer than the one in Three Rivers, there is nothing around except the hotel's restaurant. Near our hotel in El Portal is a GIGANTIC rockslide in the river valley. It's so big that they've constructed bridges to route the road to the other side of the river as a detour. There was only room for one lane on the other side of the river, however, so there's another traffic light like there was in Sequoia. Shortly after we went through the detour this afternoon, we were stopped by a traffic jam. Earlier, there was a bad car accident. With the one way roads & traffic lights & people getting off work at the warehouse, the large amount of cars made it difficult for the rescue workers to get to the accident scene. Many of us stood around outside our cars for over an hour, while a few rangers on their way home from work directed traffic & ambulances arrived to take the victims to the helicopters. The hospitals are so far away that helicopter evacuations are common. All I could think about (courtesy of Trauma shows on Discovery TV) was that "golden hour" where medical attention greatly increases peoples chances of being ok. Since we were in a canyon with no cell service, the traffic jam didn't happen until a whole half hour after the accident, and the ambulances didn't get there until at least an hour and 15 minutes had gone by. They weren't in the helicopters yet when they let the cars go, and it had been more than an hour & a half. It was pretty scary, especially when we saw the cars. After coming up and out of the canyon, we eventually happened upon the town of Mariposa. We had dinner at a local Chinese place (Mine was surprisingly amazing, Mike didn't really like his) and then amazing ice cream sundaes at Happy Burger, the cutest little burger joint on earth.
