Day 12: Sonora - Yosemite - Bishop

Well after an altogether too short sleep we got up for the longest day of the year: The Summer Solstice in America. We soon went downstairs for our breakfast of toast, cakes, juice and fruit.
Following this we quickly packed up and where on the road about 8:30am (local time of course).
We started today backtracking a little before setting off down the road to Yosemite National Park. As we got closer the park the road quickly became a lot steeper and through a picturesque winding road we reached heights above 3000 feet (approx 1km).
When we finally reached the park gate we were surrounded by forest, and as we passed the booths here we saw many signs warning us of Black Bears and other wildlife.
However the route to the first view (or Vista Point) revealed only one deer in the surrounding landscape. The first view more than made up for this however, as we caught our first view of the breathtaking Half Dome (a gigantic rock in the Yosemite valley, originally carved out in the Ice ages by huge glaciers). Our further driving for the next while showed similar amazing views of the gigantic rocks of the park, and waterfalls cascading down the valley.
Our next stop was at the unbelievable Bridalveil falls, a huge waterfall spurting over the top of the gigantic cliffs, with a surrounding 'veil' of mist or water vapour more slowly descending down the cliff. After taking pictures of this from a distance we walked into the forest to view the falls themselves, and the water vapour soaked us, and caused a stream of water to flow down the path. A man we spoke to later in the car park said this was the best he had ever seen the falls.
We hopped back in the car and drove to the 'Curry Village', another one of Yosemite's camping shops/eateries, with many photo stops in between. The landscape was amazing! There was too much to take in at once and I'm sure I could spend a week just looking at all the natural wonders.

After picking up sandwiches from the rather overpriced shop we walked 1.4 miles up the road to Mirror Lake, a very picturesque lake between imposing and wonderful rock faces in the park.
We consumed our lunch here and admired the 'Beware of Mountain Lions' sign before sadly having to move on back to the car to carry on. On the way down we also saw 4 squirrels, one of which shot up a tree right beside us. Evidently wild ones are much more agile than the overfed park ones!

We moved on up the valley now, towards the Tioga Pass, which sits at almost 10,000 feet above sea level (almost the height of Mount Cook). As we moved up the valley, we noticed something completely unexpected: snow lining the woods beside the road, some looking over a metre thick. We obviously had to stop the car at one such place and throw snowballs at each other. We certainly did not expect snow on the first day of Summer!
We next stopped at the beautiful Tenayah lake, about 7000 feet above sea level. Here we sat on the snow and also saw 5 Blue Jays, birds quite rarely seen elsewhere.
Soon after this we stopped at Tuolumne Meadows, which were flooded yet absolutely Beautiful, and of course in some places covered in snow.
We had just one more picture stop before the pass, to admire the snow capped mountains, and here we once again got something extra seeing our first ever Chipmunk. Sadly these small animals (and squirrels) remained the only mammals we saw in the park, as no badgers, skunks, bears, foxes, beavers or mountain lions showed up (all of which are apparently seen in Yosemite).
Just before we reached the pass: the highest place we were going something even more strange happened: it actually began snowing on us! We got snowed on on the first day of summer!
We didn't stay at our height of 10,000 feet for long though as it was cold, and so we quickly drove down to the plains on the other side of the Yosemite park mountains.
We discovered one more attraction to see before we went to today's final destination of Bishop township, and those were the Tufa tower formations at Mono Lake. These formations were originally made by air bubbling up beneath the overly salty Mono Lake (about 2.5 times as salty as seawater!) and forming crystalline structures. Now the lake is lower we can see easily these interesting formations. Then we bid these Tufas goodbye (plus the hundreds of gulls near them) and drove down finally to Bishop. We found our motel quickly and settled in, having a nice dinner and then having a rater more chilly after-dinner swim.
We certainly made the most of this longest day of the year, and I believe it has been the best day we have had in America (so far!), yes, even better than Disneyland!