2019 Fall Walk
This Fall we did try to sync up our time with Jennifer and her pups, but unfortunately they had to head out early in September. There wasn’t that much color going on that early so I had to make this hard decision to just let them go.
We made our trip on October 11, drove past this terrifying Saddleback fire. It caused horrific traffic on I5, awful air, and damaged not only to our forest but also people’s houses. I shut most of the windows at our house before we left so TT’s little kitty sister Shia-Shia should be fine.
Yosemite National Park
- Fee : $30 per vehicle or $25* per motorcycle
Our plan to arrive at Mammoth around 1 am ended up becoming 2:30 am in the morning, Yosemite was our goal to reach for this trip, can’t believe the last time I brought TT here was five years ago, the time he was recovering from his car accident.
We packed some food from the breakfast place and headed to the national park on Saturday. Soon enough I realized we came to this area too early, foliage was still mostly green.
I imagine California fall color became a thing just like California super bloom, we ran into more people than I ever experienced, parking spots were incredibly hard to find, and we weren’t able to stop around lower Yosemite falls trailhead to have a dog friendly walk.
I was disappointed but determined to not let this feeling sink in to affect what I feel about this road trip. We stopped at a lake to capture this beautiful sunset and called that a day.
Bishop
The next morning we drove down to Bishop to explore along CA-168.
I felt so sorry we couldn’t take TT on a proper walk at Yosemite yesterday, guess that’s probably why he gave me this face.
Having an audio book playing The Once and Future King in the background, we drove and paused whenever there’s something extraordinary to see, sometimes just by the road, sometimes we could park and walk deeper with TT.
Parchers Resort (La Hupp Picnic Area) to Green Lake
- Route : Out and back
- Length : 5 mi
- Elevation : 1843 ft
There’s a 5 miles out and back trail to Green Lake hiding right behind Parchers Resort. 5 miles seems like nothing but little did I know 2000 feet constant elevation steep switchbacks distorted me. We give up half way around 3 pm.
Hours of drive back home made me feel like I never had a true weekend break, some people I talked to disagree with hours of car drive versus how much I get from a trip like this, but I don’t think we will stop exploring, to fill with curiosity and being active is what makes me feel alive.
We miss Jennifer and her dogs deeply, imagine how much color they can add to this trip if we were going together.
As usual, we didn’t skip this year, gold color rolled across northern California, we walked under the trees and wondered about what we will see and where we will be in the next year of this exact same moment.
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