28th October, Olmsted Point and the Tioga Road

There is no 'gas' station in Yosemite Valley, the nearest is at Crane Flat which you come to just after leaving the valley. We were terribly short of fuel, down to 1/4 tank which in a 3.8 litre gas guzzler is not good.
After our relaxed leaving we got to the petrol station in high hopes only to be told they had no fuel and the nearest was in the Toluomne meadows on the Tioga Road a good 1½ hours away. If they had none (which the garage at Crane Flat thought highly likely) we would have to continue to Lee Vining, well out of the park and 2 hours away.
We would be running on gas! What to do but carry on.
The Tioga Road passes through high country and runs east to the Park's exit through a landscape of golden grass, pine trees and granite domes. There is a broad parking spot at Olmsted Point where there is a view over granite and glacial erratics, through Tenaya Canyon, past Clouds Rest to the north side of the Half Dome. You can walk on the rocky, gritty edges and get great compositions of rocks and trees.





Here is Mairi with the view behind her. The sky was perfect blue in the high clear air and I used a polariser to accentuate this. 






Next to the Olmsted Point lies Tenaya Lake, which the Ahwaneechee Indians knew as Py-wi-ack or Lake of the Shining Rocks. The modern name is after their native chief who was captured here in 1851 by the Mariposa battalion. The lake was perfectly lucid, just ruffled by a slight breeze.




We resolved to drive straight from here to find petrol and fortunately the gas station in the meadows had fuel so we could breathe a sigh of relief. We had hoped to pick up some groceries but the general store had shut and had it's canvas roof removed!! In the summer it is used for restocking by hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, walking from Mexico to Canada.






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