Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
Link to more photos (Click on the photos to read their captions.)
Travel is not yet back to normal. I first booked this trip in January 2020 for later that year. Covid canceled that, and I then re-booked in May of this year for August, by which time I thought everything would be fine. Nope. The mask mandates still due to Covid were no problem. It was the Caldor wildfire that really messed things up!
The tour, by Good Times Travel, was to include Mammoth, Mono Lake, two nights at South Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite. Three days before departure (!), it was clear that we would not be able to go to Tahoe, and GTT announced that instead of two nights at Tahoe, we would spend one extra night at Mammoth and one extra night at Yosemite. New activities would include Lee Vining and a ride on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. (I would have preferred visiting Manzanar and Devils Postpile.)
But the hits kept coming! On Tuesday night, while we were at Yosemite, the US Forest Service closed all National Forests in California due to continuing wildfire threats. The train trip was instantly impossible. GTT, scrambling to adapt, added a new activity for Thursday, but Wednesday became an open day of no group activities other than meals.
So what did we finally get? On Sunday, the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine and a tour of some of the film sites in the Alabama Hills. On Monday, a gondola ride to the top of Mammoth Mountain, a tour of the June Lake Loop, the Old School House Museum and Upside-Down House in Lee Vining, and a visit to Mono Lake. See the photos (link above).
At our hotel for Sunday and Monday, our "room" was enormous! Instead of a room with two beds, we had a suite with two bedrooms, two baths, a sitting room, dining area, and full kitchen. Three TVs: one in the large room and one for each bedroom. And one bathroom was gigantic, apparently to accommodate wheelchairs throughout, including in the shower.
We spent all day Tuesday in Yosemite National Park, with a number of sightseeing stops, including completely dry waterfalls, and a bit of hiking. See the photos (link above).
I saw that our hotel offered a nature hike at 10 am every morning, but when I asked about it Wednesday morning, it had been cancelled due to the overnight forest closures. So Victor and I did a short little hike around the hotel area.
On our way back home, we stopped at the Forestiere Underground Gardens.
The weather was mild throughout. I'm very sorry we couldn't get to Lake Tahoe, but there was nothing anyone could do about that.
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