Christmas Day

Our Christmas tree!

Had a quiet day today. Went for a walk into the village to go to Starbucks, came back and had lunch at 2.30pm, steak, chicken and vegies. Played a boardgame for ages and had lots of laughs. Good times.........

Just a few photos from our walk to follow

The outside of our apartment building

Merry Christmas!

View from our window

We woke up to a wonderful white wonderland yesterday morning. The skies were grey however, and it was quite windy, so we had a fairly quiet day at home. Occasionally we would go off in pairs to go to the shops. Jason and Sam braved a walk down to the lake side where they said it was windy and cold.

We have been binge watching Sherlock on Netflix and settled into watch the last two episodes of the most recent season. All ready now for the new season to start on Jan 1 2017.

Christmas Eve dawned with even more snow than yesterday.

View of car park

We did some last minute grocery shopping. What a contrast to the shops at home on Christmas eve. It was calm and quiet, not many people around. Everything closes earlier today, and I think there is a lot to be said for some quiet time the day before Christmas Day for reflection and preparation instead of the mad rush we have. 

We decided it was too good a day to miss with snow and blue skies so decided to go to Tahoe Meadows which had been recommended to us as a snow play area. Well, it took us (Jason) AT LEAST and hour and a half to get the snow chains on and then at least another half and hour getting used to driving with them. However, we were extremely glad to have them on, as we would not have made it very far. In fact it was a necessity.

View from Mt Rose lookout

We had a great time spending a couple of hours in the snow. We will sleep well tonight. 

Ready to descend

Sam protecting herself from incoming snow balls

Jason and Alex in battle

On the road back down.

Back at our apartment drinking hot chocolate and egg nog on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to one and all.

Feeling Festive

It was so nice this morning not to have to pack up and drive somewhere first thing. We had a slow start, and then Jason and I went to buy provisions. There is a severe weather warning for Friday and Saturday, with 6-8 inches of snow expected. The lady in the tourist info centre said that it will be a white Christmas "guaranteed".  We are "snow" excited!! Hopefully it does eventuate.

Girls relaxing in the morning sun

View from apartment balcony

Whilst I love going through grocery shops in other countries, in fact it's like a tourist destination for me, when I actually have to go grocery shopping for real and not just picking up a few things, it becomes overwhelming. I spent a long time looking for things and retracing my steps. Still, so many interesting foods to see! Most importantly, Jason bought a beautiful Christmas tree!!

Given that we expect not to be able to travel far in the next few days, we thought that we should explore the lake while we could. It was a sunny day with blue skies and mild temps of around 3-5 degrees. We drove about half an hour, going through the villages of Crystal Bay, King's Beach, Tahoe Vista, down to Tahoe City. It was very pretty and uncannily reminded us of familiar coastal areas such as Golden Beach or Burleigh Heads with pine trees along the water line.

We did a slow meander back to Incline Village where we (well the Gehrke girls) rejuvenated ourselves at Starbucks and relaxed by the fire with Jason for a while. THEN it was time to decorate the Christmas tree. We had gathered a few light, flat decorations on the way, made a tree topper star from a wire coat hanger covered in tinsel,  and so very lucky that the apartment had some fairy lights. My life is now complete! :)

Improvised decorations with pinecones

Our beautiful Christmas fairies 

Tahoe Trial

Finally we were off to Lake Tahoe, the place where we are having the "holiday" part of the holiday. We have had this place booked since July which is unusually organised for us! Lake Tahoe is a ski destination in winter and we have high hopes for a white Christmas.

We left the quaint goldmine town of Sonora and headed for "them thar hills".

You can see the original water line. California has been in
severe drought for 5 years.

Bridge over the lake which we also drove over.

More snow capped mountains.

Redwoods

 We had been travelling for about two hours, and were driving through some beautiful snow country, had Christmas songs playing and feeling generally pretty good about life in general. Then we came across this:

ROAD CLOSED!

We had just driven two hours for nothing and now had to return almost back to Sonora to take a different route. Frustrating beyond words! We had no choice but to turn back and go the other way.

Sun setting again as we drive

 As it got darker and we ascended the mountain ranges it got colder and foggier, and the roads seemed narrower and steeper. It was a white knuckle journey. Unbeknown to Jason and I, we each wondered if we would reach our final destination tonight, we just didn't verbalise our doubts out loud at the time. Jason did an amazing job of driving and getting us all safely to Lake Tahoe (a few prayers helped as well).

Iced over lake with snow drifts

We made a last stop at the Walmart and stocked up on a few groceries and some snow gear. Then it was only a "short" 10 miles up another dark foggy hill to our final stop. It was with a huge sigh of relief we made it to our apartment, and we don't have to move for a whole 7 days. It's very disappointing that there is no snow, however, we have full bellies, hot showers and warm beds awaiting. Maybe the snow will come for Christmas.

Yes Yosemite

 Today was the day we get to Yosemite (finally).This has been on my bucket list for many years and I'm so glad we made the effort to get here. We didn't realise just how vast the National Park was, and it took us an hour of driving before we got to the Valley and the amazing sights. The drive was very scenic, and so refreshing to see green trees after so much desert and Sierra countryside.

Beautiful scenery.

We passed through an icicle laced tunnel 1 mile long to be greeted with this breathtaking sight! El Capitan on the left is the largest granite monolith in the world, on the right you can see Half Dome rock and Sentinel rock with Yosemite falls tumbling down the cliff face. The temperature dropped significantly here, and we were excited to see ice and snow.

The mile long tunnel

First stop was Bridal Veil Falls, an easy 15 minute walk off the road. There were quite a lot of people visiting despite the season and it made us glad we weren't visiting in summer.

Bridalveil Falls

The valley itself is only 1 mile wide and 7 miles long, so it was very easy to drive around to see most of what there was to see. Had we been keen hikers, we could have stayed at one of the lodges on site to take advantage of other numerous, longer hikes.

El Capitan

Giant redwood tree

Yosemite falls from Sentinel Bridge

Half Dome

Picturesque River Merced

Yosemite falls

Yosemite falls was the last sight before leaving the park, and another easy loop walk from the road. The falls were falling quite fast so at the foot there was a loud roaring noise and icy water spray. Invigorating to say the least. On the return loop, the path was blocked with Police tape, you know, the one the says "Do Not Cross"? Yeah that one. Did we take any notice of that? No! Jason's words "it's just a prank", we could see well beyond the tape and it looked fine. It was fine until we stepped into thigh high snow!! By this stage we estimated we were half way back, so whether we forged on or turned back it was going to be tough going. It was alarming and hilarious all at the same time. We did make it, we didn't fair too badly except Sam who had very cold and numb feet.

A long drive out of the park (yet again at dusk), and we pushed on (through very dark, very windy roads), to a place called Sonora. Another gold mining town where we found excellent cheap accommodation and one of the best meals we've had in the form of the Chinese restaurant down the road.

I See Sierra

A quick visit to the local visitor centre near Lone Pine confirmed our worst fears that the pass into Yosemite National Park was closed for the winter. Even though we had checked the website in Australia before we left, this detail seems to have escaped us, as well as the rangers we spoke to at Grand Canyon when we told them we wanted to visit Yosemite. So instead of continuing north to see more highway and get to our Lake Tahoe house two days early. We decided to allllllllll the way south again (half way back to LA), around the Sierra Nevada Mountain range and the back up on the eastern side to Fresno. As we get closer to Yosemite we'll check for any changes in road conditions, however, it is unlikely we'll get in. We may however, get into Yosemite Valley.

At least the scenery was greener and prettier than the desert side and we were rewarded with a beautiful drive through the Sierra Nevada Mountains with sun shining through coloured leaves and reflecting of babbling brooks. It was worth the change of plans to take us to Bakersfield.

We took more B roads from Bakersfield to Fresno, however this proved to be less rewarding with acres and acres of orange groves to see. We were going to try and push further, but night was falling and we were all pretty fed up with being in the car after 6 hours (except Jason who is the perpetual traveller).

Last look at the Sierra Nevada mountains from the Eastern side.

Unusual cactus plants

Lake Isabella on the moutain crossing

Going back down the mountains

Majestic!

Orange groves at the foot of the mountains now looking from the
western side

Oil Derricks

Driving the back roads to Fresno

When you've had enough!