Welcome to Yosemite 9945ft

Alright finally a good nights sleep, it was cool right from the start and no crazy animals to wake us up. There were a lot of really creepy birds all over the camp ground, seagulls. It reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds." I guess Mono Lake is one of their major breading grounds and they stick around because all the dumb foreign tourist keep feeding them since they think it's so cool. Well anyway back to the ride. We got up on our own this morning, no alarm since it was suppose to be a shorter ride with only a large climb up Tioga pass and then we were told that it was pretty much down hill to the other side of the Park. So we said goodbye to Joel and told him we would wait for him at either the top or Tuolomne Meadows Village. We headed out and started a very grueling grind to the top but it was filled with endless gorgeous views. It wasn't too long into the ride and I was waiting for Kelly. Her knee was starting to bother her and I knew it would take awhile to get to the top. I was had been waiting for Kelly for about 5mins and figured that she had already gotten onto her own break schedule so I decided to continue riding and it wasn't more then 3mins later and I heard her voice, "how did she catch me" I thought to myself and then I looked back to see her sitting in the front seat of a jacked up white Ford truck. She said she was getting a ride to the top. This didn't upset me since she was having knee troubles but it was now a personal challenge to see how fast I could make it to the top. I began to peddle as hard as I could and when my legs burned too bad to peddle I got off and walked until they felt better and then got on and road. It took me only 1 hour and 45mins to summit the beast and found Kelly waiting at the top cheering me on. It was a welcomed sight since I was extremely exhausted. It turns out that she was dropped off at Ellis Lake about 3 miles from the top. The ride from there was very pretty and not too difficult. There was only one 200 foot climb and the rest was basically flat.
While Kelly was waiting she met one of the workers that cycled to work, her name was Anna and she thought what we were doing was amazing and told us that she would give us guest passes so we didn't have to pay the $10 a person entry fee. So we waited for Joel so that he could get in free too. As we sat there we chatted with people that drove by and asked us what we were doing. We wrote down our website for a bunch of them so the could check us out. We kept getting mixed messages about how far Joel was back but he eventually made it to the top and we headed to Tuolomne Meadows to get some food. Tuolome Meadows is a very eclectic gathering point. It was interesting to meet all the hikers stopping for a piece of civilization. The term civilization means something different to a cyclist than a backpacker. To backpackers civilization is any place with facilities and people, to me as a cyclist, since we run into towns pretty regularly it's a place that offers amenities that I guess you could call luxuries like Mc Donald's. After we had ate, sent a few post cards and grabbed some food and a 6 pack to enjoy later we hit the road. According to a motorcyclist we had met the day before it was all down hill from here on out. We learned very quickly that they must have been on some good drugs because we had some pretty good hills to climb before we got to our campsite. When we finally made it to the campsite we tied our beer to a rock and through it in the stream, set up camp and then joined the beer in the stream to cool off and soak our tired feet. The after noon was very relaxing and enjoyable. We got to chatting with some of our neighbors and they were super cool. One couple were doing a National Parks tour and almost done and the other couple were just out doing some mountain biking for a couple days. The first couple invited us over to enjoy their curry with them and we spent the rest of the night sitting by the campfire and swapping war stories. It was a good time! Thanks for your continued support!