And just down the road ...

this time inside Yosemite National Park limits, Tenaya Lake.

From Freaky Desert Lake to Alpine Paradise...

gaining nearly 3000' altitude, with just a 15 minute drive. California is awesome. It really is.



This stop along the road included LOTS of rock throwing. Because throwing rocks in an attempt to break thru ice is possibly even more fun than simply throwing them in or skimming them over the water.

Next up, more alpine paradise, just inside the gates of Yosemite National Park...

More Mono at Sunrise...

More Mark Twain, too:
"We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is sometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California." It is one of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. ... Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sailless sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied." -- excerpted from chapters 37 & 38 of Roughing It



Mark Twain and I clearly disagree as to the picturesque-ness of this place.

Look who else came along for some sunrise exercise...

And the dudes, too...



Brrrrrr ...





"Not graced with the picturesque"?!? Puh-lease...



Per usual, the dudes throw rocks ...

The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory...

In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings;
with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet,
and with two he flew.
And one called out to another and said,
"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts,
The whole earth is full of His glory."
And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out,
while the temple was filling with smoke.

Then I said,
Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."

Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
And he touched my mouth with it and said,
"Behold, this has touched your lips;
and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven."

Isaiah 6:1-7