Outside My Southern Comfort Zone: Scenic Sunday Drive

Mike recently had the opportunity to go skiing (yes, snow skiing) on some leftover patches of snow. A friend of is has skied every month for 130 consecutive months (or something like that). Anyway, snow is pretty scarce these days and there are a few small patches left at higher elevations (above 10,000 ft).

Anyway, when Mike got home he just raved about how beautiful the area was so, yesterday we drove down so I could check it out. It's a little over an hour south of our home. The further south you go, the bigger the mountains seem to get.

We stopped along the way to let the doggie swim in the river. Our first official stop was at Twin Lakes.

Fall colors are starting in the higher elevations.

1 of the twin lakes.. and one cute doggy nose!

Our next stop was at a local hot springs. They are all natural and the temp of the water is near perfect. Unfortunately, we didn't really come prepared with bathing suits etc. And although other people in the springs had clearly made the same mistake (or they opted out of using a bathing suit), we decided we didn't want to sit in pool with a bunch of other naked people. So, we will come back another time.

One of the hot springs.

The lower springs...
there was a whole lot of naked down there.

The coolest thing about the hot springs was that one of the pools actually has a waterfall of warm water feeding it. It trickles down over this large rock and falls into the pool of warm water. It was beautiful. I would've taken a picture but I feared the naked people would get concerned that they were in it. We'll just have to come back one day.

After the hot springs adventure, we drove south to Kavanaugh Ridge (where Mike went skiing a few weeks ago). It's way up high ~11,000 ft and it's a LONG four wheel drive road to get up there. There is a lake with free camping along the way although the lake is more of a small pond right now.

Yep, we are definitely in a drought.

Where is this road going???

The view from the top of the ridge is unbelievable.

We shared an icy cold Sierra Nevada while enjoying the view.

It was 50 degrees and VERY windy!

Mono Lake in the distance.

We also stopped by Virginia Lakes. There are 2 lakes but we only stopped at one. It was another beautiful alpine lake with amazing water but this lake was slightly more green in color than the others we've seen.

We stopped at the Mobil gas station on Tioga Pass (just outside Yosemite) for lunch. Yep, you read that right. We ate at a gas station. But not just any gas station... they had a LOT of people eating there and a LONG line when we arrived at 3:00 in the afternoon. It's called the "Whoa Nelly Deli" and they have excellent food. There is a restaurant near Mammoth called Toomey's and Mike loves their lobster taquitos. This gas station is the original location of those lobster taquitos. Also, they claim to have "world famous fish tacos," so naturally we had to try them. They were ok.

When we got home, we didn't want dinner but DID want dessert. I made a homemade peach crisp which was insanely easy! I found a simple recipe on Pinterest and gave it a whirl. Mike doesn't even like peaches and he liked this: