Today again an early morning. We had breakfast at 7.30 AM. Afterwards, we drove away from Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth Lakes is a place I would much like to visit again, but then for a longer time. There really is a lot to do there. I saw that there are lots of activities, like mountain biking, climbing, skiing and a lot of other fun stuff.
It was a 2,5 hour drive up to the eastern entrance of Yosemite National Park. We got in with our annual national park pass, and drove to the first visitors centre. Here, we got informed about all the nice things we could do. The ranger there really took her time explaining me all the nice and not too crowded activities, so we took all her advice and did exactly the things she had told us.
First of all, we went for two small hikes. One over the meadows, where I spotted some really cute animals, lime some desert rabbits and a deer.
Later on, we did a hike that went straight up a really large rock! The view here was great. By this time, we were still over 9000 feet high.
After the hikes and after we had some lunch, we drove down the valley, and went to the Tuolumne Grove. This is the place where the large, 3000 year old Sequoia trees grow. These trees are insanely large and thick. And some of them have been here for 3000 years! We also saw a lot of wildlife here, like some birds, squirrels, other forest creatures and again a deer. This one was a young one, and let me come very close! Result: some awesome photographs of the little one! (Which I have to upload later, they are still on my camera)
We finished our walk and went to the valley, the most famous part of the park, but also the most touristic part of the place. There are lots of campsites here, as well as cafes, stores, etc. I loved the views in the valley, but besides the views I personally did not really like this place. There were just so many people here. And the squirrels here are very aggressive. They walk on the cafe terraces, bother people who are eating. I think this is a very bad thing, since I know from the ranger at Grand Canyon that these squirrels carry a lot of diseases with them. So we left pretty quick. We drove our way out of the park and ate at one of the resorts just outside the national park.
It was again dark when we drove the last hour to our next hotel, the Travelodge at Angels Camp. This wasn’t easy, since we had to cross some passes still! We crossed a few mountains but couldn’t see any further than 20 meters! Tomorrow, we can finally sleep in and do not need to set an alarm! Let’s get some rest! Cheers!
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