Yosemite in high season

We are at the Lower Lee Vining Forest Service campground (map), along Lee Vining Creek, perhaps three miles west of the eponymous town at the junction of Tioga Pass Road and US-395.

Monday morning we got a fairly early start (for us, anyway), leaving the Oakhurst Elks by 9:30 or so. I wanted to make the ascent into the park in the cooler part of the day, and I also knew that just before noon would be the best time to try to score an unreservable camp site, as noon is the official checkout time.

As always, the drive through the park was wonderful and scenic. With outside temperatures in the 70s and the low park speed limit of 35, Odyssey had little trouble with the enormous climb, although we did heat things up enough to cook some more oil out of the exhaust -- I will sure be glad when it is finally all gone and we don't have to smell it any longer. I bet the folks driving behind us felt the same way.

We arrived at Crane Flat around 12:30, a bit later than planned due mostly to two stretches of park road under one-way traffic control for maintenance. One of those stops was so long we ate our lunch -- no big deal for us, but we detected a palpable sense of frustration among the other drivers in line with us as we approached the 20 minute mark. In any case, we arrived just in time to grab the last 35' (nominal) camp site (map), which accommodated us easily and was actually a lovely spot. As I expected, though, it was under the trees, so we were unable to deploy the satellite dish. As a side note, Crane Flat is 50% (of 166 spaces) first-come-first-served, yet it is not listed at all on the Camping Without a Reservation page; perhaps that's why there were still plenty of spaces left at 12:30.

We observed that Yosemite Valley was, unsurprisingly, a complete zoo as we rolled past on the way to Crane Flat. Nevertheless, we were able to get a 5:30 dinner reservation at the Ahwahnee Hotel, an old favorite of ours. We rode back down the hill on the scooters, roughly 20 miles to the hotel. We had left ourselves plenty of time, in case we got caught in the construction again, but this time the delay was just ten minutes. So we decided to ride around the valley a bit, and see what we were missing at the valley campgrounds (100% reservations-required).

I have to say, our digs at Crane Flat were much nicer. The Upper Pines campground was absolutely cheek-by-jowl, and the Lower Pines only a little bit less so. Many sites had four or five tents in them, and the six-person limit per site seems to be widely ignored. Had I managed to book a site in one of these camps (several sites popped up briefly as available during my search, but all would have been a gamble on fitting us), we would have had the advantage of free shuttles to valley destinations (including dinner), and swimming in the Merced River nearby, but we would have been miserable from the crowds.

If we had, in fact, managed a site in the valley, we might have spent more than one night. But that was plenty for us, Yosemite veterans as we are, and we broke camp yesterday morning to head over the pass. Again, cool temperatures and a fairly low speed limit meant the climb from 6,200' at Crane Flat to 9,600' at Tioga Pass was fairly uneventful, and I only had to turn out a handful of times. We stopped briefly near Tenaya Lake for lunch, and again at Tuolumne Meadows for a bathroom break and to stamp our passport, which had somehow escaped it thus far.

The back side of the pass always makes for exciting driving, and even though we did not burn a single drop of fuel on the downhill run, I still had to pull over once to cool down, just from the retarder shedding that much heat into the engine coolant. I still had to stab at the brakes a few times even with the retarder engaged, but we made it down without heating either up excessively.

The drive over the hill is physically tiring, and we decided to stop at one of the half dozen Forest Service campgrounds on the eastern slope. This is actually the last one in the eastbound direction, and it turns out to be a lovely spot. We are in a lush grove of aspens, with wide separation from other campers (unlike in the park, where we opted to turn the air compressor off overnight to avoid disturbing the tenters). If we intended to stay a few days, we could choose a spot next to the river and set up the hot tub; since we are just passing through, we opted for a more isolated space closer to the entrance. There are nearly 60 sites here, but you wouldn't know it from the entrance or where we are parked.

Today we will make a quick stop in Lee Vining for some groceries, then continue east on 120 to the state line. We call this section of 120 the "whoop-dee-doo" road, because it traverses a set of rolling hills that give the road a roller-coaster aspect; when we've done it on motorcycles we've even gotten "air" on some of the hills. We will endeavor to keep Odyssey firmly on the pavement. That will connect with US-6, which will take us all the way to Tonopah, Nevada, where we will need fuel. From there we have a choice of three directions, and we will pick one tomorrow morning based on the weather outlook.