Lone Pine to Lake Tahoe 220 miles

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Early start this morning waking up at 6.45, then just as we were getting ready we heard a strange noise coming from the window by stephs bed. It was a frog or a toad croaking away as if to wake us up! Natures alarm! We got ready then I went to reception to get some wifi to upload the last two days blog posts as we've struggled for wifi for the last 24 hours and to be honest I was too busy in Vegas to upload! When I get back I'll do a check through and upload some better photos. We've got a load spread over two cameras, my iPhone and video camera. It's been easier for me to upload the ones from my iPhone over the wifi rather than faff with sd cards, but to be honest when I've been taking photos I've mainly done it on my video camera because its been more to hand.


Once we'd got ourselves sorted we set off after getting some coffee at the motel, got some 'gas' and headed up to Tahoe. I've checked the map and whilst we head up alongside some pretty high peaks I think we go through the sierra mountains in the left and another range of mountains on the right at least most of the way. There is a westbound road that heads into Yosemite half way up but it's closed this time of year for snow. They don't open it until about June each year and close it around September because there is so much snow and it takes them weeks to clear it. I'm sure the other two are a but gutted cause the waterfalls and scenery is supposed to be breathtaking but I'm secretly a bit pleased as I know there would definitely be huge drops and heights!

We've only got today and tomorrow left on the open road now as we get to San Francisco late tomorrow, where we have two nights before flying back on Saturday. We all agreed last night that whilst we've really enjoyed the driving and the trip it will be nice to give the car back. Although I'm not sure what state it will be in once we've removed all our luggage and see what's underneath it all! We have been trying to do regular rubbish dumps when we stop. The front of car has hit probably thousands of flies on the journey and its normal that we can't take photos through the front windscreen because its dotted with flies and marks. We realised about four days ago that all the gas stations actually have brushes and squegees to wash the windscreen with so we've been doing that but I think some are so ground in it needs a good clean but I'm sure they'll be expecting that when we drop it off. The mileage since we left Chicago reads 2702 at the moment so we'll definitely clear 3000 before we drop it off. That's going to equate to about 40% of my annual mileage back home done in 13 days!! The sat nav when we set off said 7 hours and we set off about 8am in the end so it will be interesting to see how long it takes. We managed to do the actual driving part yesterday in about 4 hours when it had originally said 6.

For most of Steph's drive today we had snow capped peaks on the left with greenery and bushes which made for some beautiful photos. On the right were more hills in the distance with a mixture of sandy desert and greenery. Kerry was excited today as we knew we were passing some places with her surname in the name, turns out we saw a sign for Owens Valley but luckily we didn't have to go down that road! We had moments again today with our ears popping with the altitude, it happened lots yesterday as we were going from sea level to 5000ft in less than an hour. We stopped in a little town by mono lake just passed the tioga pass where most of it was shut up for the winter. I would imagine its very busy when the pass is open. We went to the one local shop that was open and stocked up on chocolate croissants, crisps, drinks etc as we hadn't had breakfast.

The scenery really is breathtaking round here and around every corner there's another snow capped mountain and lake. Sometimes it feels like you could be in Switzerland or even in Norway by a fjord. The lakes are so still and there is a slight haze over them which adds to the beauty. We have some great photos to load up which will be amazing to look back on. We headed on through Bridgeport, Walker eating up the miles towards Tahoe. We saw a sign in one of the towns that read 'Dear God, April showers please!' We ended up arriving much earlier than the sat nav had told us! And arrived about 1 in the end, so it had taken us 5hrs with a short stop. We checked in then we phoned to try and book snowmobiling but they were doing maintenance on the trail so that was a no go. So we got in the car and went up in the gondola up the mountain. I have to say I'm really proud of myself, it was so high and I was really scared but the views are amazing! We had a beer at the top then headed down after about an hour and a half.

Then we went for a quiet sit on the beach which is outside our room and went for a drink on the pier and decided to stay there for dinner. I had a New York strip, whilst Kerry had scallops and Steph had a flatbread pizza. We had the funniest time though as there was a waiter who was obsessed with topping our water up, he must have topped up the water four times before Kerry and Steph decided it would be fun to drink their water and wait for the guy to run over and top it up. So he then proceeded to come over probably about another six times to top the water up. We were in hysterics the whole meal, then the next time he stopped to have a conversation he said 'its hot today' and these two replied 'yeah we've got a thirst on!' After the meal and more drinks we got the bill. Stephs was $15, mine was $43 and Kerry's was $50!! Which was because of the wine she'd been drinking. We then walked out onto the pier to watch the sun go down behind the mountain nd got some nice photos before steph went back to the room and me and Kerry went on a chocolate run to the Safeway across the road. Then we all settled in and had another early night. Tomorrow we leave for San Francisco for our last drive of the trip!

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