Lake Tahoe and Yosemite

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September 5th 2012

Published: September 28th 2012

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Chris And Nena

Got Nuts?

Eat what you can and bury the rest.

Once finally out of the BM exodus (three hours after starting out) we grabbed some petrol and then jumped on the freeway towards Reno (stopping briefly so some school kids could wash our ridiculously dusty car for $6). In Reno, we found a Wholefoods store, and next door a Sierra Trading Outlet. Double score! Sierra trading is a mainly online store which sells camping sorta stuff extremely cheap. Wholefoods (as we may have mentioned earlier) is a great place for stocking up on at least vaguely healthy foods, supplements and ready made meals too. There was also a nearby Goodwill drop-bin so we put in a bunch of the clothes that we had bought back in Vegas (now slightly dusty, but still good!). We limited ourselves to only a couple of items in Sierra, grabbed some camping foods from Wholefoods, and then left. Actually - Chris found some Gore-tex hiking boots in Sierra Trading for only $60, but due to the condition of his feet (scungy and covered in dust) he didn't want to try them on (and hence, didn't buy them).

We were both pretty tired and made our way towards the East side of Lake Tahoe. As we

Tropical Beach

Bloody cold water though (Lake Tahoe).

started to travel around towards the south of the lake, we were passed by some police, who then blocked the road up ahead and were getting everyone to turn around and drive back (quite some distance). We aren't sure what happenned, but a helicopter also started flying around. The road was really windy with a steep drop off of one side - so maybe a crash?

We were a bit worried that we'd run out of fuel, but we eventually made it to a town around the north side that had fuel. Chris was also getting really tired by now, so we stopped at one point to check out the water. Lake Tahoe is really cold, but after being bathed in mainly playa dust for the last week Chris braved the cold to dunk himself in the water. It's been too long since a nice dunk in fresh (and not salt) water. So good! The next job was trying to find accomodation. The first place we tried to find didn't appear to exist anymore. The next was a State Park campsite, which was closed for the season. erm... it's summer and there were people everywhere. Why closed? We found

Mountains

Lake Tahoe down the bottom. The water is so clear that apparently in some areas you can see to a depth of 20 metres! The lake is over 500 metres deep in the centre. It's huge!

out later that there have been major cutbacks to funding state parks, so a lot of the park campsites couldn't afford to stay open. Seems crazy, as they are generally very busy and they are also very expensive (as we found out later). Oh well. So, we continued down the West side of the lake and found another State Park campsite that was open. And charging $35 for a campsite! WTF? We drove on to try and find something better and found a privately owned campsite in the next town which was only $25, was right on the lake and seemed much nicer. The park appeared to have a bunch of Burners camping in it from huge RV trucks to a German guy in a tent who told us about driving a small Citreon around USA that he shipped across from France! This was also our first introduction to the bear-proof food storage containers. Every campsite has a large metal cupboard on legs with a lock that isn't easy to open. You put in here your food and anything that looks like food or has been near food. The reason is that the black bears have an amazing sense of

Freaky drive

Sheer drops to either side.

smell that would shame even a dog. Supposedly they can smell a can of tomatoes that hasn't been opened and is in the car.

The next morning we got going early(ish). As we were leaving we realised we hadn't enjoyed the beach onto the lake. So we slowed down and took some photos of it instead. :-) It was pretty beautiful. As we continued around the lake, we were frequently going ooh and ahh - the water is clear and blue and with white beaches you'd think you were in a tropical paradise. At one stage you are driving along a ridge with a very steep drop off to either side and crazy switchbacks. Exciting driving! Once away from Lake Tahoe, we headed South and then drove up and into Yosemite. And it definitely was UP - a big long climb from the East side to get you into the stunning mountains (around 3000m). Beautiful high altitude lakes, and crazy rock formations abound. It was also noticeable cooler up here (as you'd expect). We decided to camp at White Wolf Campground, which since it wasn't a State Park only charged $16 a night - much better. We put all

Burning Man

For a few days after the burn you see grey dusty cars with decorated bikes everywhere in western USA. Awesome.

our food and items in the bear-proof locker (especially after learning that the Yosemite bears have learnt how to open or even break into a car door!?!), and after dinner went on a star walk with the ranger. It was getting pretty cold, but it was really interesting to have the ranger point out all the different constellations, planets and talk about the stories about the constellations (such as Sagitarius pointing the arrow and Scorpio, the story of Neptume, Andromeda and Casseopaya and so on). There was a bit of confusion when someone in the group helpfully pointed out that the reason you can't see the whole Milky Way and it appears splotchy is because of dark matter like dust and stuff. hmmm that's not dark matter. Chris bit his tongue and decided not to interrupt.

The next morning we were awoken by the sound of a friendly neighbourhood squirrel dropping pine nuts on our tent from half way up a very tall tree. After breakfast we drove into Yosemite Valley from our campsite to get a coffee, watch a documentary movie and do some walking. During the doco an old guy next to us was having a nap

Olmstead Point

"Clouds Rest" on the left and "Half Dome" centre left. The boulders you can see in the foreground are really big and are called "Glacial Erratics". Thought to have been dumped there by retreating glaciers.

complete with earth shattering snoring. Fair enough - it wasn't that interesting. We took one of the shuttle buses and then climbed up a very steep trail (see the photos) to Vernal falls which were still running despite there being not much rain lately. There were a lot of people on the trail but the numbers thinned a bit further up, and we found a nice spot to admire the lake at the top and the mountains without too many others around. After that walk, we drove back out a bit to watch one of the famous mountains (El Capitan) get some sunset light. It was pretty beautiful, and we were entertained by some rednecks who had stopped nearby and were shouting at each other. Back at camp we ate dinner and then went to the ranger activity for the night which was a discussion about the giant Sequioa trees complete with sing-a-long which was more humorous than cringeworthy thankfully as he had modified lots of well-known songs (such as Lake of Fire by Johnny Cash). Some of the interesting things we learnt were that Sequioas are largely fireproof for a few reasons - their lowest branches are actually very

Yosemite

Beautiful and huge

high up so a small fire won't get to them, their bark is up to 50cm thick which stops the inside wood getting burnt, and that the resin in the trees is also fireproof. They drop very small seeds (around the size of a piece of oatmeal) which can only germinate when it hits the soil so they need frequent fires to clear away the undergrowth. When humans discovered the Giant Sequioas they tried to protect them by stopping the fires! Ahh yes, lucky we came along - these 2000 year old trees were really finding it hard without us. Oh well - of course the numbers started to decrease until finally someone realised the problem and now the rangers either use fire, or manually clear away the area around the giants to allow new seedlings to grow. Another interesting thing about the trees is that they have very large roots but they are very shallow, which means too much disturbance around the base can cause them to topple over in a storm. Being anywhere near a 100m+ tall tree when it comes down would be somewhat terrifying...

Thursday morning and we were on our way back to Vegas.

Rainbow waterfall

Pretty

We went on a backroad that was both terrifying and entertaining with the most ridiculously large "dips". Heading into one at 100km/h and not being able to see the bottom is a strange experience. The road also went through an interesting variety of flora before we finally came out onto one of the main highways. If there's one thing that's stuck in our heads from all this driving around is that America really knows space. Even after seeing some of Australia's outback, the roads and mountains out here can't help but impress. Americans also love building straight roads - nothing like looking at the GPS and seeing a straight line, and even as you zoom out and out it stays straight. Nearly as bad as the Hay Plain (or worse - the Broken Hill to North Eastern NSW drive). And while you're out here driving the only thing you find on the radio is Jesus. Blah blah, he died so we could blah blah. On and on everywhere. Other entertaining features of the American equivalent of the outback is the funny people you meet at little service stations. Strange looking ladymen (hard to tell sometimes) with one or two teeth

Waterfall

From the top. That's the drop right in front.

left. Friendly though. :-)

After a very long day driving we came into Las Vegas looking for a hotel. The first one we tried was full, but the second one had a room - two queen sized beds in a large room for $33 a night. Ahhh Viva Las Vegas. So cheap. Even better was that in the foyer there was a Hash House a Go Go restaurant so we were looking forwards to another large and delcious breakfast (hmmm must buy new clothes in larger sizes!).

Friday morning and following the aforementioned giant breakfast, we did a few boring housekeeping things that needed to be done - laundromat, clean and vacuum the car. We also popped into the Mac Shop so Nena could drool over the Macbook Air and umm and ahh over whether to get one or not (she didn't). Just as we were on our way to drop the car off a couple of cars in front suddenly locked up and Chris had to hit the brakes hard to avoid a collision. We realised later that since we had extended our car rental, we hadn't extended the insurance so we would've been in shit if

Lake at the Top

Up above the waterfall there was a peaceful lake

we had hit. Chris would like to thank hours of playing Forza on the xbox for avoiding the crash. After dropping off the car we caught a bus to the airport and boarded what was possibly the newest plane we've seen. We were flying Virgin and the plane was in such good condition with everything working well. Good stuff. Next stop, San Francisco!

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