We decided to visit the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite today. David had gone backpacking in the area back in the 80s. We drove CA41 to the valley, then CA120 out of the valley to Tioga Road. We drove the Tioga road to Tioga Pass at the eastern end of the park before we turned around and headed back. The drive to Tioga Pass took four hours from when left the Wanderer. The Tuolumne Meadows area is beautiful with patches of forest (with the leaves changing color) and expansive meadows with tall granite mountains all around. The granite that forms the Sierra Mountains is over 800 miles long and over 80 miles wide. Near Tioga Pass we were at 9000 feet of elevation and there was still snow in the peaks around us. It was a beautiful day. As we stopped to admire Lake Tenaya, another couple had also stopped. They had a mixed breed pit bull with tons of energy. She was very energetic. The woman picked up a stick and threw it a short way into the lake. The dog considered it for a minute and then ran toward the water, jumped in and retrieved that stick. The woman threw it another couple of times. By the 3rdor 4thtime, the poor dog was freezing as the water was beautifully cold and clear. It was a kick seeing that the dog wanted to get that stick but wasn’t risking the cold water any longer! On the way back, we came around a sharp curve and there was a car stopped partway on the road and partway into a pull out. David braked hard to slow down since we could not see if there was oncoming traffic and we saw why they had stopped. There was a very large black bear just off the edge of the pull out eating. We pulled around the stopped car to get off the road and got out of the truck to get a better camera angle. But stayed well back. It was the largest black bear we had ever seen and it was busy munching away on plants. Other cars began to pull over and soon there was a traffic jam starting to build up. People started running up to get pictures of the bear. People were not staying back and the bear started to act nervous, so we decided it was time to leave and let the other folks be the bear bait.
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| El Capitain in the fall colors |
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| Fall colors along the Merced River |
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| High Sierras |
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| David in front of Tenaya Lake |
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| Tanya Lake |
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| The Bear! |
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| Tuolumne Meadows |
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