Off the Grid

---

Hey there folks, it's been a busy week. Since we left Jake and Lauren's great hospitality in San Fran, we found out:


• The upper campgrounds at Yosemite get pretty cold at night, and the Valley floor gets absurdly choked with LA-like traffic during peak season;
• Mammoth Lakes (via the Mono County Health Department) has a foreign travel vaccination clinic;
• Deep Springs College is alive and well;
• There is absolutely nothing (except an innocuous sounding company, US Ecology, whose primary business is radioactive waste disposal) along US 95 in Western Nevada into Las Vegas;
• Southern Utah is beautiful;
• The Mormons (we suspect it's them, anyway) run a very fine campground at Zion Ponderosa Ranch;
• The Angel's Landing hike at Zion is only the 2nd most lethal trail in the park, according to official records, though unofficial records might dispute that tally;
• Apparently, if you're in a national park, it's perfectly acceptable to forget common courtesy and every rule of the road you've ever learned;
• The drive from Zion to Moab, UT, is pretty amazing, and puts you close to an absurd number of national parks, monuments, and scenic stops, of which we only got to check out a handful;
• Latest stops include Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, and just today, Arches National Park (shoutout to Doc, our tour guide);



We've got one more night in Moab and then we're onto Colorado, Texas and Louisiana.

Stay frosty.

Justin & Lindsey

(PS- SCROLL DOWN FOR SOME PHOTOGRAPHY AND THOUGHTFUL CAPTIONS)

---

Photos

Descent into Yosemite Valley
Featuring the trusty El Silverado, which is Spanish for mediocre pickup truck bought at fire sale pricing.

Yosemite Valley
More descent into the gridlocked traffic hell of Yosemite Valley, which never had people stopping for no reason in heavy traffic, ever.

River
A nice summer day at the bottom of Yosemite Valley.

Garnish
A bit of rock, featuring a nice tree garnish.

Backsplash, or tiles?
As it turns out, Yosemite features fine slabs of granite that are not currently in your kitchen.

More building materials
This is more of a rock crudité.

Color me bad
A space time anomaly off Tuolumne Meadows where suddenly, all color disappeared from the world.

Tree, uninterrupted
A rare species of brooding, solitary and probably emotionally unstable tree.

Say whaaaaaaat?
A Kroy-Pentland sighting!

Buzz Killington
Mammoth Brewing makes a fine product. That hits much harder at 8,000 feet, as their helpful sign points out.

Right outside Mammoth coming into Devil's Postpile.

Overlook above Devil's Postpile.

Fancy Panorama that totally justifies the iPhone's huge premium over other phones.

Keogh Hot Springs outside of Bishop. A lot of jackrabbits and strange bugs.

Bristlecone Pines! They're really, really old.

Your authors, getting high... in elevation. This is at about 9,000 feet.

Another fancy panorama that totally justifies the iPhone premium. Thank you Apple, for taking our money.

Deep Fun College!!!

Your co-author and hostess with the mostess welcoming you to Nevada!

A mile long tunnel at Zion National Park that had some cutout windows. Which is odd, because slowing or stopping to look is highly frowned upon.

Weeping Rock at Zion, and Justin bending space-time yet again, jeez.