Day 17

Day 17 had us departing from Merced, CA. for a tour of Yosemite National Park before heading for our rest spot for the night in Mammoth Lakes, CA.

Highway 140 heading East out of Merced is relatively flat and uneventful farm land for many miles.  I originally thought these were Orange Groves but found out they are Almond and Pistachio crops.  They go on for miles.

Much like the Alberta Foothills, as you head down 140 they start to roll and get higher and higher until you're into full blown canyons.

A nice family man with a heavy Eastern Bloc accent kindly snapped this photo for us at a riverside stop near Mariposa, CA.

As soon as you enter the park there is unreal scenery around every corner.  This was the first of many waterfalls we saw today.

We swapped picture duties with another couple traveling by bike at Glacier Point.  To reach here was a climb of several thousand feet, almost all of it droning along in second gear at about 30 mph.  As we climbed I noticed my clutch pull beginning to change in the rare spots I needed to shift.  By the time we reached the top I had no clutch left at all and basically came to a stop by stalling out the bike.  We sat for an bit longer than we would have normally at this viewpoint and the clutch slowly started coming back as it cooled down.

Since we were giving the clutch a rest, may as well snap a few more majestic views.

This was the order of the day, traffic moved faster in downtown San Fran during rush hour.

The photo can't do this justice.

Grumpy face on during our second clutch induced rest stop during the climb to over 10,000 feet heading out of the park through Tioga pass.

Almost got to witness an East Indian family get pasted onto the roadway while stopped to get this photo.  They seemed to have a hard time comprehending that the bridge they wanted to stand on to take better photo's was also a 50 mph road.

Tioga Pass Park exit on Highway 120 towards Interstate 395.

We stopped at Ellery Lake to give the backsides a break.  The scenery was incredible and I watched a fellow fish for a short while, unfortunately for him no luck with the fish.

Char snapped this one as we descended from Tioga Pass towards I-395.

Figured I was likely to take some grief from my friends with American Iron over my clutch issues so figured I'd better include this photo while pointing out I rode out of the park.

Tomorrows goal is Las Vegas where we have 3 nights booked at the Stratosphere for $27 a night (gotta love priceline).  Hopefully this will give me time to get my hands on a Barnett clutch spring and find a dealer capable of installing it before we move on.

Mileage covered today was 407.6 km giving us a 17 day total of 5345.2 km.