Oct 30 - Yosemite National Park, California - Tioga Road

  This morning we got an early start, and went over to the laundry facility in the park.  We were out of clean clothes, and definitely needed to do the wash.  The sign on the door said the laundry was open from 8 am to 9:30 pm, but the door was still locked.  A maintenance man drove by on his motorized cart and unlocked it for us, saying that it should have been open.  So, we did the wash, hanging out in the lodge which now had WiFi (no cell coverage).  When I finished the drying, a man came in and told us they were going to close the laundry, so I went over to the office, and sure enough, they said that they were low on water, so they were conserving it by closing the laundry.  And, by the way, the laundry was locked, for that reason --how did we get in?  Wasn't there a sign on the door?  I explained, but was really glad that we were able to get our wash done.
   We decided to go up to the Tioga Road route through Yosemite today.  This road, if taken all the way, goes over to Nevada.  We didn't go that far.  It is one of the most scenic roads we have been on.  As most of the roads here do, it runs along the mountain sides, twisting and turning.  But the vistas are incredible.  The granite mountains show themselves in full color.  There are many places where the glaciers just sheered off everything, so there are slides of pure rock.  These mountains are huge.  The abundance of rock faces, with rock boulders strewn in the strangest places, and the sheer size of it all creates such an amazing feeling.  It is so BOLD, so SOLID, so MAGNIFICENT.  I couldn't get enough of it.  Each place we stopped at was incredible.
   We stopped for lunch at an overlook.  White, sort of flat rock, created a sort of plain we could walk around on.  We sat on some boulders, overlooking the amazing mountains and valleys, and ate our picnic lunch.
   The absolutely most amazing place (possibly of the trip) was at Olmstead Point.  This was an overlook, looking into the Yosemite Valley that we were in yesterday.  You get to see Half Dome mountain from a different angle, and now it looks like a full Dome.  This overlook had vast expanses of sheer somewhat flat, cracked rock, with boulders here and there.  But at the end of the overlook, there were some rock stairs going downward.  Very inviting.  We didn't even think about it, but followed them. Thank goodness we did.  It took us to a scenic overview, the like of which I have never seen before.  It was phenomenal!  Every direction you looked was incredible.  Huge mountains with the side sheered off.  Half Dome mountain in the distance.  Big roundish, flatish rocks to walk on to view it all.  Beautiful valleys.  Behind us more mountains still.  I could have sat there, in the sun, for hours.  We met a man from the Czech Republic, and Peter chatted with him for quite a while, while I drank up the view.
  We finally moved on to the picnic areas surrounding Tenaya Lake.  A sweet little clear-water lake.  We walked the beachy area for a bit, and started the journey back the way we came.
   We decided to go into the sort-of nearby town of Groveland for dinner, and to pick up a few things from the only grocery store around.  For the number of people that visit the park each year, there are very few amenities around.

Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park -lots of photos: