Gaylor Lakes in Yosemite

The Gaylor Lakes trail starts at 9,950 ft elevation just past the Tioga Pass entrance, then it's another 600 ft elevation gain to the basin. We followed the stream to the upper lake, then went further up to Gaylor Peak and explored the old silver mining ruins. 

Starting out in Dana Meadows

Going up

Looking down on Dana Meadows

Middle lake

Upper and Middle Gaylor lakes

Pretty flowers and lichen way up in there in the cold thin air

Heading back down. 

We all know the water cycle. It's one thing to just learn and know this, but to actually see the entire process in action has given us a whole new level of understanding and fascination. Hiking to the top of a snow covered mountain, seeing the path that the melting snow takes as it drains into a lake, and following the stream further down into other lakes, rivers and waterfalls, is a lot more exciting than a textbook illustration.

This journey has been one giant field trip for us! We're learning so much about human and natural history everyday, that we've taken to calling our expenses tuition.

Glacial erratics in Tuolumne Meadows

Granite cliffs at Olmsted Point. Activist and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park in NYC, and is considered to be the father of American landscape architecture.

We took one last drive to Yosemite Valley, explored a few short trails and hiked up to see Vernal Falls.
(UP as in 1.6 miles uphill the whole way!)

We didn't see any forest spirits, but we did see a big brown bear when we reached end of this walkway! 

We crossed paths with him, maybe 25 feet apart. He glanced up at us, and continued on his way, unimpressed. I wasn't expecting a bear in that spot because there were so many people and cars around, but Yogi Bear is based on the truth, in that bears just want to steal your sandwiches. We heard they break into mini-vans more often than other vehicles - think little kids and cheerios on the floor.

 More Mather

On our drive back towards home, we stopped again at Olmsted Point to watch the full moonrise from behind the mountains. I've never seen a brighter night. The whole place lit up with the moonlight glinting off the white granite cliffs.

Methuselah Trail

We drove out to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest one afternoon to meet the world's oldest living (singular) things. The road up into the White Mountains is a fun, hilly, curvy, pretty drive. We decided to hike the Methuselah Trail, starting at the visitor center. 4.5 miles? No problem. We're pretty used to these crazy elevations by now, after hiking Zion and Bryce Canyons. The visitor center was closed, and the brochure box at the trail head was empty - double bummer. Whatevs, we saw the largest trees ever, now it's time to see the oldest trees ever!

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Along the trail

See how close together the rings are

It is humbling to consider all that these elders have lived through. Time seems a bit off on that trail, and the sky changed from overcast, to blue, to stormy gray while the white mountains glared in the sunlight. There is a 900 feet elevation loss and gain. We wandered slowly down the trail at first, inspecting all the little details of these gnarled beasts. After awhile, we realized the trail did not seem to be looping back to the visitor's center. How long have we been out here?



Many of these trees look dead at first glance, but as long as they have a single strip of bark running up the trunk, they are able to survive. The exposed wood makes beautiful colors and patterns.



Spooky

This was about the time we felt the fear creeping in - high elevations, low blood sugar, little shade, running out of water, fighting nausea, the ever present knowledge of our finite human existence...we had not passed any fellow hikers since leaving the almost empty parking lot.

We took it slowly and continued up the trail. It brought us to the top of this mountain where you can see all the way to Death Valley. We found a bench along the trail and stopped to take in the scene and eat some trail mix before pushing on again. We passed two fellow hikers!

Pine Cone River

One mile to go!

The clouds part above us

Almost back to the car

We became dangerously low on gasoline driving up, but were able to coast the whole way back to town...

..and back into Rusty's Saloon, our local Checkerboard equivalent.
Cheers to surviving our ill-planned adventure!

Far from home. Born to roam.

After Hawthorne, we shook the dust from our feet and crossed through the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, and over the last of the Nevada Hills. We were greeted by our old familiar and endangered friend, Mono Lake. 

Don't touch the tufa!    (in the voice of California's 38th governor)

There was green grass maintained at the park where this boardwalk began. I sprawled out, face down. Almost forgot how it felt.

Driving south on 395, that's Yosemite in the background! Bowie's not impressed.

We quickly learned how freaking expensive it is to camp in California. Even in the national forests, a developed campsite with no water or electricity can run you $30 a night. Yeah no. We ended up staying in an empty RV park in the Bishop county fairgrounds, full hookup (and full sun) for $20 the first week. The whole place was already reserved the following week for the high school rodeo state tournament. It was right in the middle of town, but we still had nice mountain views.



We rented a car to check out Yosemite National Park, and all of the surrounding wildlife areas for the next two weeks. We did a lot of mountain hiking, tree hugging, and gasping in awe at the sight of it all.

Lake Sabrina

Dark-throated Shooting Stars

The trees have eyes

It's kind of like traveling through a Catan board

We climbed a mountain, and Ed got me a snowball in June.

It's a lichen-tree!

Along the trail

Mountain-side

CCC at Yosemite

Hello, Tenaya Lake

Tuolumne Grove is a holy place. Giant sequoias are the largest living things on earth. I've found it mostly futile to photograph these big trees because without an actual sense of scale, they look mostly ordinary. My dinky camera doesn't like looking up into the sun either.
You need to be in their presence.

A wild Ed, for scale

*for larger pictures of the informational signs - right click the image > open image in new tab > click image again

Ed inside a fallen sequoia

A famous campsite

Meadows in Yosemite Valley (I just noticed Upper Yosemite Falls between the trees on the left!)

Sitting on the mountainside next to a tumbling creek, enjoying the view.

El Capitan (left) and Half Dome (center) hanging out with some sweet puffy clouds.

We pulled over for this wizard tree

Devil's Postpile National Monument

Just look at it.

Mathematical Rubble

Devils Postpile is one of the world's best examples of columnar basalt. This was a lava flow which cooled at a uniform rate. Vertical cracks develop at intersections of approximately 120 degrees. Later on, glaciers flow through, carving out the valley, exposing the 60-foot-high sheer wall, and polishing the top.

The top


These stripes are called glacial striations. They're caused by ice and stone flowing in the glacier.

Glacial polish

Really, really cool place. I don't know how else to say it, it's like nothing I've ever seen or dreamed of.

Also just happy that it even exists, still. The area was once a part of Yosemite National Park, but after someone discovered gold, park boundaries changed. Developers wanted to blast it to pieces and build a dam. John Muir, along with other Californian preservationists persuaded the federal government to stop the demolition. In 1911, president Taft protected the area as a National Monument.

Thank God for the environmentalists. These sacred places in our national parks and other preserves are only the remnants of what once was.

From the top of Devils Postpile, we hiked through the Ansel Adams Wilderness towards Rainbow Falls.

The sun caught these needles just right.

Aftermath of the rainbow wildfire from 1992 in the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area.

Rainbow Falls

More to come!