Giddy up and gold mine

I picked up Ashely from the airport on Wednesday February 15th around 7:40 PM. We picked up the rental car and were back at my house by around 9:30 PM. She was exhausted for had been up since 5:00 AM Florida time, making her being up 2:00 AM California time. Oh I know that feeling oh too well. I had picked up a few things from the store earlier in the day in case she was exhausted and didn't wanna grab a bite out. Which I was glad I did. I made a delectable frozen entree of Chicken Alfredo with some naan bread. After filling our bellies we were off to sleepy land. We woke up this morning around 9:30 AM. Fooled around the house for a while, made some breakfast of fresh strawberries, bananas, yogurt and granola. We hit the road around 11:30 AM. The traffic in the city is aweful. I have no desire to drive in this place. I will stick to walking, thank you very much. Between the drivers, the bicyclists and the horrible placement of the traffic signals, driving in the city is a death trap waiting to happen. We stopped in Modesto to have In-N-Out burger. Which like always was delicious. Even Eggbert was excited!

The drive down to Yosemite took about 4 hours from the city and was beautiful. The hills are just something I have nothing seen before. When we got closer to Oakhurst the hills had so many boulders sprinkled across the land it was outrageous. I kept trying to take pictures but every time the shutter would go off I would have a blurred picture of a rock wall. 

Once we got higher in elevation I started to see white chunks on the side of the road and realized it was snow chunks! We had such a hard time trying to decide between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. The one reason we wanted to go to Tahoe was because we wanted to see snow. We decided on Yosemite because we figured it would be a way better experience, and if we were not going to see snow then we would have more fun. Little did we know until Tuesday that it was planning to snow on Wednesday. We checked into our hotel, which was a Best Western, and absolutely adorable. There are so many different buildings around the property intertwined though out the land making each building secluded. 


Since it was about 4:30 PM we dragged all of our luggage inside, and headed towards Yosemite National Park to get some pictures and fool around for a bit before the sun set. Our hotel is at about 2,000 feet elevation. Once we hit about 3,000 feet the snow was accumulating more and more on the sides of the road. 

Not long into our drive the ground was completely covered in snow. Snow was resting in the tree boughs, and would gently fall to the ground as we would pass by. We stopped at a few turnouts to get photos. The first stop we found a snowman made, he wasn't perfect but he gave us some company. The snow was so deep it was exciting. But we got cold, and I'm glad I had some back up gloves with me. Luckily, Eggbert still has his winter shell and kept warm the entire trip.

I wasn't expecting to see this much snow. I am so excited for the adventures we will have tomorrow. We drove all the way to the gates of Yosemite, where low and behold we found another snowman.... Or I suppose I should be politically correct, snow woman. Someone had a sense of humor. 

We came back to town and stopped at Todd's Bar-b-q. We had the ribs and they were delicious. The town here is pretty small, but who cares. I am not here for the small town but the huge National Forrest that awaits for me the next few days.