Day 77 – The Last Pass

Benton, CA to Yosemite National Park – 73 miles

I woke up at around 6 for an early start.  Walt made some blueberry pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast.  The pancakes were some of the best I have ever had.  Apparently he got the recipe from a Bed and Breakfast that they stopped at on one of their bike tours.  I was on the road by 730.  It was so rejuvenating to have a couple of home cooked meals and a bed to sleep in.  Thanks for the hospitality, Ann and Walt!

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The ride started out climbing almost immediately.  It was a bit boring at first, but it was nice and cool, so I put on some tunes and podcasts and just slugged through it.  After awhile it flattened out to rolling hills and then climbed just a bit more to go over the first of two passes for the day.

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After the first pass the route descended into Mono Lake and for the first time in something like a week a started to see trees.  Big trees.  It was awesome to finally be in a forest again.  You really forget how great trees are until you’ve spent a few days in the desert.

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Just a couple of miles past Mono Lake was the town of Lee Vining.  It’s a touristy town at the base of the climb up Tioga Pass to Yosemite.  I restocked at the grocery store in town and then headed to the gas station at the turn off to go up the pass.  I relaxed there for a bit and drank loads of coffee to prepare for the monstrous climb ahead.

Started riding again at around 3 or 4 and met another self-contained touring cyclist, Meric, near the bottom.  Meric is a graduate student at a university in Florida studying math.  This was like his 3rd or 4th tour.  Always good to run into another self-propelled, two-wheeled enthusiast!

 

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It was a slow going climb.  It had to be around 3000 feet of straight up.  At about 9000 ft I saw a forest road that Ann and Walt had mentioned had a closed forest service camp ground up it.  I hiked up a short way to explore and see if I might camp there.  It was surprisingly nice with fire rings and some picnic tables remaining, but ultimately I decided not to stay since there weren’t any bear proof food containers and there was a camp already set up near by.

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As I approached the top of the climb the views looking back over the canyon were amazing.

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I still had a few miles of climbing and the sun was going down, so as I continued up in elevation it kept getting colder.  The last few miles were littered with these lakes that were created when a hydroelectric dam was installed at the top of the canyon in the previous photo.

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When I got to the entrance of Yosemite National Park Meric was already up there.  It was nice to celebrate the top of the climb with someone and we each snapped a couple photos for each other.  This was the last large pass of my trip to the coast.  I’m sure there will be a few more hill stop climb, but nothing even close to this magnitude.

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After the entrance to the park it was downhill all the way to Tuolumne Meadows.  Every campground we had passed so far was full, so I didn’t have high hopes for this one, but it was getting dark and we were running out of options.

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The landscape was so incredibly picturesque and it’s a great example of how much it can change in just a day of riding.  I had been in desert pretty much exclusively for at least 5 days and now here I was in a forest with lakes and green lush meadows.

When we got to the Tuolumne Meadows campground and it was full of course, but luckily they had a hiker camping area that the campground host let us camp in.  It was perfect.  When we got up there we saw another touring cyclist.  I can’t recall his name now, but he was from the Netherlands and this was his first time in the states.  He had a fire going, so I warmed up by it because my hands were dead numb from the freezing ride down from the pass.  We swapped stories for awhile about our journeys and then called it a night.

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