Friday, July 27, 2012

Yosemite Day 2 - king of the mountain!

After leaving the Yosemite Bug resort early around 6.30am, we made our way back into Yosemite, this time to the glacier pass south of Yosemite Valley. There were two trails and Sentinel Dome was the first one - 1.1 miles one way on the side of the mountain through the forest and then up onto the dome, you can see the dome in the distance in the upper right corner of the first photo.

For me, the last bit of actually climbing onto the dome itself was hard and after a lot of huffing and puffing I made it to the top. It felt like an achievement and I was rewarded with a fantastic 360 degree view of the valleys and mountains below. Check out the video for a better idea of the view, I only had my compact cam with me so the photos are not as clear as with the big one.


Midway stop, before the final stretch and the climb.


After finally making it to the top, I had to re-enact my reaction so Simone could take a photo :)







We were the first ones on top that day, we picked the time just right to avoid the busloads of people doing those hiking trails.

At that time, taking off from the parking lot to make our way to Lake Tahoe, we had a quarter of a tank of fuel left, with no petrol stations close by. So we had to do some calculating and we had two choices: go south to a petrol station 27 miles away and double back, adding about an hour and a half to our travel time. Or go north and hope the petrol station marked on the map 37 miles away is there and open. We went north and thankfully arrived at the petrol station to fill up. Then it was about 4 hours to Lake Tahoe, some video below as we are leaving the area.


In a little town called Walker, we stopped at the "World Famous" Mountain View BBQ. Turned out this place was actually a great little stop, the food was delicious and cheap. Simone's "hot dog" burger and fries was $5.95. They used a nice German pork sausage in it, very tasty. I had the chopped BBQ brisket beef sandwich, with potato salad on the side. The salad was a nice German style potato salad with egg, spring onion, red onion and a little bacon. Yum!!

The photos are from the inside the place. The BBQ was right outside on the front, smoking all kind of meats.




The BBQ out the front.



Simone spotted her first Border Collie.

No comments:

Post a Comment