We stopped at a Gas station to get some supplies and at this point noticed a warning light that looked like an arse on the panel. Without a manual to tell us what this meant we were a bit bemused. We finally worked out it was tire pressure and checked the tires our back left tire being a little low on pressure. We topped it up and the warning went away.
We continued on the long straight roads of Nevada for a little bit then crossed back into California as we approached Yosemite. On the way we turned off to visit Bodie a gold rush era Ghost town.
The road to Bodie was first very windy then “Enhanced Dirt” road which means rough and nasty dirt road. Some bone shaking driving later we arrived at Bodie. It's a very strange place almost seeming unreal due to the amount of Hollywood versions of western towns I've seen. The dark brown wooden buildings left abandoned in this valley. The town was a gold rush town that was slowly abandoned and eventually mostly burnt down the surviving buildings (of which there are about 50 in the main town area) are all set out as they were abandoned.
It's a pretty weird place to visit with building in various states of falling apart full of items covered in dust and slowly falling decaying.
We finished up and headed back to the car, it was my turn to drive and the first thing I noticed was the return of the warning light. I checked the tire to find that it had gone flat. We then spent several minutes in the heat fitting the emergency spare a smaller high pressure tire which speed limited us to 50 mph. We were a little worried how this would take the “Enchanced Dirt Road” we had to travel to get out of Bodie and then the 200 odd miles we still had to go but with no other option we set off at a very slow pace.
We survived the bone shaking dirt road and so did our tire and we made our way across towards Mono Lake a hyper salinated lake with some interesting formations and wildlife. Mindful of the time we only had a brief stop there but it was a really beautiful reflective lake with lots of Gulls and other animals about as well as these odd Tufa towers sticking out. Once we had snapped some pictures and paused for a quick snack of crisps we were off again aiming for Yosemite and Tioga pass.
This is the point where the roads abandoned the straight long stretching into the distance profile and adopted the super curvy up and down with huge chasmous falls on the side with very little room to manoeuvre. Here being limited to 50 was not so much a handy cap as this was usually the max speed and even then not really a safe speed to be maintaining so our tootling along at 45 or so was not such an impediment.
We entered the Tioga pass which crosses Yosemite and then made our way through the park to some spectacular scenery. We had to wait a bit at the entry post as the ranger explained to driver after driver that they couldn't take the road they had intended due to the fire and she seemed relieved when we told her were already knew and were going down the ca120 instead.
We drove along for a while taking in the lakes and mountains and then stopped to change drivers again when I started to feel like I was loosing concentration (not something you want on hairpin bends over huge drops).
After a while we left the park and were travelling along equally windy roads to our destination Oakhurst. The sun was setting by this point and we were both getting tired and hungry. We stopped off at a burger king for some refreshments then made the final 30 mile drive in the dark getting in just after 9:30. We checked in and headed to the room exhausted.
It's been a really full day today tomorrow we need to get that tire fixed and then hopefully there will be time for some sight seeing in Yosemite. We did pass three tire places on the way to the hotel so we have hope this will be a quick thing to get sorted. It's been a day of disasters getting lost, a flat tire, and a road being on fire but after that lot things can hopefully only get better (fingers crossed :S)
