Yosemite National Park

For Memorial Day weekend my girlfriend and I decided to go hit up Yosemite National Park, as neither of us had been there before and it sounded awesome. As it turns out, awesome was indeed upon the menu and in such abundance that I thought I would share.

Clicking on the image above will send you to an album with all my photos.

Because we went on a holiday weekend, the on-site cabins and hotel rooms were either booked up or ridiculously expensive, so we turned to the ever reliable Airbnb for an alternative. We ended up settling on a condo two hours east in Mammoth Lake. While it would require a fairly hefty drive to get into the heart of Yosemite, we figured the drive would be half the fun. And sure enough it was, although it took twice as long as expected due to the holiday traffic.

I wish my pictures could better convey the heights depicted within because the drop-offs on the ride into and out of Yosemite were enough to make my palms sweat. But boy did they make for great photos! And once we were with Yosemite Valley, it was just the reverse with massive mountains jutting up against the sky all around us. Next time we go I plan to hike up one of those bad boys.



Sadly, we didn't get a lot of time to wander Yosemite as the headlights in our car were broken (we could only use high beams; see Hiaku from Tuesday) but an hour and a half was more than enough to walk to loops beneath the waterfall and through the prairie. And as I mentioned before, the ride in provided us with LOTS of fodder for photos and videos, the latter of which I've yet to dive into.

That was Saturday. On Sunday we decided to stay local and check out the sites around Mammoth lake, which included Mono Lake, a beautiful, massive salt-water lake that is three times as salty as the ocean. It's also littered with Tufa rock formations, formed from...well, I don't really remember how they formed, but they look cool.



We also went off the beaten path and found a much smaller lake hidden among the mountains that was absolutely gorgeous, albeit colonized by what appeared to be a slice of the backwater, redneck South transplanted into the West Coast. I swear I could hear a banjo echoing off the hills...

But our biggest find was a restaurant all by its lonesome out near Mono lake called The Historic Mono Inn. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Mammoth Lakes I beg you, BEG YOU, to go have dinner at this place. It was AMAZING. I ordered the Shredded Lamb Ravioli and my girlfriend got the Rack of Antelope. I almost ordered another serving of the ravioli for dessert, but didn't, which I of course now regret.

The restaurant is fairly small, and because of an absent waiter we were actually served by the co-owner, who was very aimable and was kind enough to answer all of our questions about the place. Even the chef (who was the other co-owner) had a chance to come out and speak to us briefly, at which point I drowned him with praise. I also left a 30% tip, which was probably a first, and clearly deserved.

I don't know how soon I'll be able to get back up to Yosemite, but I will definitely be going back. And if you have any opportunity to do so yourself I highly recommend it.