Some Unplanned Magic

After leaving Las Vegas last Tuesday we were headed for Yosemite via Death Valley.  We got away from Vegas quite a few hours later than we had originally planned (a result of a spot of shopping at premium outlets) and spent the night in Bishop, California.  A town along the Sierra Nevada.  We had arrived in darkness so the kids were totally unprepapred for the what they saw when they opened their curtains in the morning.

Their reaction was priceless.  None of them had ever seen snow before so there was a fair bit of excitement.

We checked out of our motel headed for Yosemite.  It didn't take long for us to notice the signs saying which passes were open and which were closed.  We hadn't anticipated that the road we were planning on taking would still be closed, being cleared of the snow.  No stress, we'd use the next one South, it was open and only added about 50 miles to the trip.

The next town along is Mammoth, a ski resort town.  We thought it would be fun for the kids to see some snow and have a play so we fronted up at the visitor information centre and asked if there was anywhere we would be able to see some snow.  The lovely man marked a couple of places on the map, each about 5 miles away.  Cool.

We found the first location, plenty of snow.  Beautiful.  Freezing.

There were a few guys setting out for an overnight ski trip (crazy).  The river running alongside was seriously gorgeous.  Still very frozen along the edges, we even spied a waterfall.  At this point we started to see tiny snowflakes falling.

Next stop was the ski resort area and the bottom of the lifts.  From what we could see there were only 2 lifts running (there are 38 in the area) and most things were packed up closed for the season.  There were still plenty of people out skiing here though.

As were piling our cold selves back into our car a group of 4 guys were getting ready to head out on the slopes.  I assume that they lived in the area and they looked like skiing and boarding was second nature to them.  It didn't stop them being totally pumped about it, it was really cool to see.  I've never been skiing but now I really want to.

After some delicious sandwiches (have you ever had fresh, warm roast turkey on a sandwich...delish!) and soup at one of the local bakeries we continued on for yosemite.

Our next stop was at Mono Lake (it's a salt lake) to have a look at the Tufa formations (feeding the inner geologists here).  I'll a avoid a bunch of rock-geek speak and say that these formations are something we learnt about at Uni but had never seen up close.  The whole geology and ecosystem of the lake was some seriously interesting stuff.

 

From here is where things started to really divert from the plan.  A few miles up the road we could see that there was snow closing in on the mountains we were headed towards.  By the time we got to the next pass information sign the pass we planned on crossing had been closed.

We kept heading north, and into the falling snow!

At this point we needed to change our destination for the day because by now there was no chance of getting back near Yosemite because of how far north and west we would end up travelling.

It snowed

and snowed

and then we stopped the car and got out and played in the fresh snow (don't be fooled by my husband in his t-shirt, it was sub 0C at this stage...)

J didn't love it, it was a bit too cold and miserable for her, but it did look awfully cute in her hair!

from there it got heavier still, and kinda white knuckle scary for me when they started setting up snow chain stations...eek!

but it didn't stop me taking the opportunity to catch a few on my tounge (even better than rain!)

Near Lake Tahoe South was where we had our final decent down the mountain range, to a yummy spaghetti dinner in Sacremento and a good night's sleep about 50 miles from San Fransisco.

The funniest thing about this amazing, magical day...it was the 1st of June.  The first day or northern summer. Bizarre!

I would love to hear from you if you are totally hanging out to hear about a particular part of our trip (seeing as I have lapsed into total random order now!)

Hope that you are enjoying your Saturday!

Tatum xx