Foothills

Coming out of Tahoe, on the way to Yosemite it was snowing over the passes and fogged in with ghostly beauty. All of a sudden we dropped below the snow line and immediately, like we’d opened a window into another world, there was SPRING! Everything was full on budded out or blooming. There were buckeye, oaks, willows, lupin, ceanothus and when we got near humans there were roses, lilac, not to mention dogwood and redbud, the glory of the roadside attractions. The green rolling hills and deeply proud valley oaks and the little deeper green watercourses with the slanting afternoon sun…all just deeply familiar and gorgeous!
We got kicked out of parking at the New Melones Lake (really low water level!) and ended up at a Walmart in Sonora, the 10th and hopefully, last, Walmart parking lot of the trip.

This posting is obviously out of sequence... I was just too jazzed about getting the Yosemite pictures posted...sorry.