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Today was the first long drive day (~9hrs) in over a week. I didn't really like Mapquest's advice on a route from Zion to Yosemite so I decided to throw my own together by running around the north side of Area 51 along the Extraterrestrial Highway and the town of Rachel. I figured any extra mileage would be offset by, ahem, higher average speeds.... I was right :)
The drive out of Springdale wasn't very much fun, I did not want to leave but I needed to start shrinking the miles to Portland so I headed off towards Yosemite. A quick drive down I-15 had me driving in Utah, cutting the corner of Arizona and then finally a quick drive in Nevada before I switched to secondary highways. The drive up 93 to 375 was pretty quick and 375 itself is mostly straight. I think it's about 90 miles total and half of that is made up of 3 straights that are ~15 miles long. The road seems to stretch out to infinity and no matter how fast you go the end stays way out on the horizon. Eventually I did hit the end of 375 and turned on to 6 which took me into California. Hwy 120 turned out to be very entertaining with several roller coaster grade dips that had massive compression at the bottoms before rotating the car and threatening to send it into orbit at each crest. I headed up the Tioga Pass from Lee Vining and into the park. The mountains had been getting closer all afternoon and now I was in them, the pass is at almost 10k feet.
I made it into the park having made exceptional time all day (78mph average speed) but then found out I had about 100 more miles to Oakhurst, about 3 more hours. I did get a first look at the park though and saw Half Dome and a few of the falls just while driving through. Having just been at Zion, Yosemite seemed to be a completely different planet. It's about the same elevation as Bryce but the geological formations are so completely different. It'll be fun to get a closer look tomorrow.
After driving several miles through some great twisties, at very slow speed with campers and trailers in the way, I finally made it to Oakhurst. I'll be spending two nights here before turning north for home. Hoping to get an early start tomorrow to beat the crowds but that never seems to work out too well ;)

A few pics from thedrive