| Thursday we had a day of rest from being tourists but on Friday we all departed. Our
friends set off for Yosemite before returning to San Francisco and then home.
We carried on on our travels. We all started off heading east down the
lakeside. |  |
 | Somewhere at the
weekend there was obviously going to be a custom car rally as we passed
several as we headed south. |
| If you have an engine this shiny then you don't want to cover it
up. It was only travelling slowly so we managed a rare (for us) overtaking
manouevre. |  |
 | We were not in a hurry
so we elected to depart via the Luther and Monitor passes which
are all over 7700ft and were rewarded by some spectacular foliage displays along the way.
Fall is really here!. |
| We missed the reds of the sugar maples which you get in New England and
eastern Canada but the multiple shades of yellows from the aspens go some way to
make up for it. |  |
 | We do stop
occasionally to admire the view and occasionally catch something else, like
this butterfly sunning itself. They are rarely still so to actually catch
one on camera is quite a treat. |
| Away from the lake the scenery reverts to rock and scrub and
desert as we move towards southern Nevada and eastern California. This view
was taken as we
came over the ridges which travel north-south. Reno is about 75 miles to
the north of here on the valley floor. |  |
 | There are several
lakes here as we head down the US395 towards Mono Lake and Yosemite. It was
at this point that we realised that our friends had departed with my video
camera still in their car. After some debate over what to do, we headed off in pursuit. |
| I like Mono Lake which is at the eastern entrance to Yosemite
National Park. It is very picturesque but almost impossible to photograph.
It doesn't empty into any oceans but just evaporates in the heat which makes
it very alkaline. |  |
 | We left Mono Lake and
headed into Yosemite. We took few photographs heading through since we had
been this way before and we were now in a hurry. We thought we had caught our
friends just outside the valley centre but they didn't see us. It turned out
not to be them at all and we didn't catch up with them until we found their
B&B in Mariposa. |
|