Day seventy five, mammoth, ca to fResno, ca. Yosemite National Park

Day dawns nice and sunny, 5 degrees says the weather app for Mammoth. For reasons outlined on yesterday’s blog, we elected not to risk breakfast at the fine establishment we had chosen for our accommodation, but instead popped down town for brekkie and for once in many many days had real bacon, real eggs ( over easy of course) and some home cooked hash, outstanding. Wised the chef up while we were there about how what we call our venison bearing animals in Kiwi Land so he didn’t get sued for false advertising.

Full tummies we headed off back along the 395, heated grips on, to Lee Vining where we headed up Tioga Pass and into Yosemite. Tioga Pass is an impressive climb, huge scenery right in your face, just stunning stuff. Into the park, plenty of stops at overlooks for pics and stuff as it’s about 100 kms from the North entrance station at Tioga, through to Yosemite Valley.

Check our that pic below of the big towering rock followed by a closeup of said rock face, you might be able to make out the rock climbers in groups of 2 making their way up the rock face, nice way to spend a Saturday morning in September I spoke. Cool.

Down in Yosemite Valley, when we stopped to take a pic of El Capitan, the traffic congestion resembled rush hour in Manhattan, silly us, I hear you scoff, to enter Yosemite on a Saturday morning, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled on our tight itinerary, so Route 41, Wawona Road toward the south entrance station was our escape route of choice. When we stopped for coffee near the Wawona Visitor center, the traffic density was more to our liking, similar perhaps to rush hour, Tuesday morning, Main Street, Whanga.

Wawona Road zig zags it’s way south out of Yosemite but still at about 5000’ asl so happy days it was in terms of temp.

Gassed up at Oakhurst, warning signs the temp was lifting, now down to below 3000’ asl and sure enough, when we hit Fresno, it was like the earth had tilted on its axis and Fresno was the closest city on earth to the sun. Jesus wept the temperature was insane. I booked the Quality hotel near University in Fresno in advance, very judicious research as it was the only Choice Hotel in Fresno with a pool and I knew we would need one.

You guessed it, when we arrived we found the pool surround to be a concrete patio, no pool, we were informed. I advised the staff we only booked here as they had a pool. This is the second establishment that has had a pool concreted over. Frustrating to say the least.