As long as the weather is going to be this nice, I'm going to take advantage of it.
So, at the beginning of the week, I checked to make sure playing hooky today wasn't going to mess anyone up. I had a plan to check out one of the few Sierra passes I have yet to explore.
From Wiki: Tioga Pass (el. 9,943 ft. / 3,031 m.) is a mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. State Route 120 runs through it, and serves as the eastern entry point for Yosemite National Park, at the Tioga Pass Entrance Station. It is the highest highway pass in California and in the Sierra Nevada.
As an FYI, $10 to go through the park. Only glad to pay it since the park visitor count was hit by both the Rim Fire and the shutdown.
The ride west was meh, mostly due to RVs and slow cars just cruising through the park rather than pulling over to admire the scenery. Speaking of which, OMG WHY did it take me so long to get down to this park?? ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL place! Amazing mountains and bright blue lakes all over the place. Wow!
120 is a much easier road than I imagined compared with the other passes over the Sierra. So nice in fact that I finally did notice the power drop around 8500 feet. Only about half way through did the permafrost damage to the road become evident and the bike spent several miles going bumpity bump over the repairs.
However, the return trip was SWEET! I headed through in the late afternoon and so NO ONE was on the road ahead of me, which meant I was able to maintain the speed limit all the way from the west entrance to the east entrance! Big long sweepers in the park, and coming down the mountain to Lee Vining again was a perfect treat for a sport bike.
Highly recommend the road, though do go when you have time to take advantage of all the pull offs to simply admire Nature's masterpiece. Such a treasure we have and one I will definitely be going back to.
