After a week of waking up at 4am, 5am, and 6am and going to bed at 8pm, 9pm, and 10pm, you’d think we would have spent our first weekend back from France just chilling. Nope. After work on Friday we picked up a Zipcar and started heading east. We made it to Groveland, about 140 miles west of San Francisco before stopping at a cheap motel for the night.

We got going early the next morning, on our way towards Mono Lake through Yosemite. Previously we’d entered the park from the south to visit Yosemite Valley, and from the west to go snowshoeing near Badger Pass, but we’d never driven across Yosemite through the Tioga Pass, California’s highest road at 9,945′ above sea level.

Though Mono Lake was our intended destination, it was impossible not to stop along the way in Yosemite. The weather was just perfect, in the high 80s, and the skies were absolutely clear. We saw Half Dome from Olmsted Point, the stunning Tenaya Lake, and of course the Tioga Pass. We made it to Mono Lake around lunchtime, so we stopped in at Bodie Mike’s BBQ in Lee Vining before heading out to explore further.

Note: I’m experimenting with adding larger versions of the photos on my blog. Each of the 380px wide images in this post links to an 800px wide version. If you’re viewing this post on my blog directly (as opposed to in a feedreader) clicking on the image should display the larger version with a sexy animated transition. Please let me know what you think.

Update: As of my Responsive Redesign in May 2015, I’m displaying the large version of photos in my posts, so I’ve removed the ability to click on the photo to enlarge it, which no longer had any purpose—and wasn’t very effective on touchscreen devices.