Yosemite (Day 1)

Day 36-40

July 15-19, 2013

Yosemite

Temp: 90-100 in Yosemite Valley,  70-80 in Tuolume Meadown

 Mileage: 500 miles

Time gone: 5 days

Sure, we weren’t in Yosemite the whole week, but for ease of picture saving and memory dumping, it will be all lumped together.

Yosemite (Day 1)

We drove north on hway 395 and stopped again at Alabama Hills to climb and eat at a place found on TripAdvisor. 

Doesn't this look like a mom and baby elephant lying down side by side with their trunks pointing to the left of the photo?

And doesn't this look like a mummy lying on its back?

Kept driving north to Mammoth Falls.  First stop was the Visitor Center where another Ranger showed us the difference between grizzly and black bears, the little snippet on mountain lions and wolves and we were allowed to hold bear poop!

Real or not?  You be the judge!

Next stop was the Gondola ride to the top of Mammoth Mountain. We got up to 11,043 ft, down to 45 degrees.  The vista was indeed grand and glorious.  It took some coaxing to get Sullivan to pose for a pic on the mountains edge, but he did it. A little good natured snowball fight in the summer, obligatory snack and we rode back down the mountain.

On to the fault line near Mammoth.  Actually it isn’t a fault line like the sign says, it is fissure in the earth. We walked along it and climbed in.  Another man and his older kids walked in with us.  Down there we found a cave that Seth got in.  There was a wall of ice!