2020 Road Trip part 3: Sierra to Sea
On the departure day from Yosemite we drove East over the Sierras on highway 120 (Tioga Pass) and I was looking forward to taking a dip in a mountain lake more than anything else that day.
So we pulled over at Tenaya Lake alongside the road and went it for a swim. I had in my mind that we would stop at various lakes including either June or Mammoth that day, so we didn’t spend a ton of time here although the emtpiness combined with the weather made it feel perfect. I later regretted that decision
Tioga Pass is considered one of the most scenic drives in California. It might have been the perfect warm weather or the fact that no cars were around, but it was a really beautiful cruise through the mountains and trees. At one point we were driving through the controlled fire seen in my previous pictures, and then we went through Tuolumne Meadows and decided to keep trucking to try to make it to a different lake in the Eastern Sierras before our planned overnight stop at Alabama Hills.
Tioga Pass grade in the Eastern Sierras. This was a seriously steep and impressive road. My photos of it didn’t do it justice but I think the one Mia took gets the vibe across: 80 degrees in the mountains, windows down and drying off from a swim in a lake. Ah, I miss it.
So here’s when I started to regret not staying up in the mountains at Tenaya or Tioga lake. This is after coming down the east of the Sierras onto highway 395. This is looking towards the area of other lakes I wanted to jump in today, where the air quality was 555… dangerously unhealthy from the Creek fire.
We abandoned the lakes and asthma and headed straight to Alabama Hills. It was Mia’s first time and honestly I was starting the feel like the smoke and ad hoc car camping plan wasn’t going to be much fun, we explored a little of the area, climbed up some rocks and had a beer while soaking in the silence of the area.
We scrapped the car camping plan for the second to last day and headed all the way back to LA and picked up Finn from the dog hotel. Given the heat wave, the weekday off from work, and that dogs are allowed at this small beach in Laguna during off-season, I was able to take another swim on vacation but in the ocean instead if a lake. It was a great way to treat the last day as a staycation and cap off a great road trip.
