Wedding of Wonders – The Blog

Today was our first full day in California and let’s just say that things did not exactly go as planned.  After arriving in Mammoth Lakes late last night, we planned on waking up as early as possible to hike around Yosemite and check out some of the amazing waterfalls that Mike had read about after the Swine Flu insanity altered our plans.  We scheduled a tour at 10:00AM that would take us up to Glacier Point and then we would hike to Yosemite Valley.  According to Google Maps, we were about 90 minutes away from the Yosemite Lodge where we were supposed to meet our tour bus, so we left the hotel around 8:00AM with (what we thought was) plenty of time to make it to the bus.  We stopped at the front desk just to double check our planned route and the exchange with the concierge sounded something like this:

Katie:  “Hi, can you tell me the best wayto get to Yosemite Lodge?”

Concierge:  “Sure.  Let’s take a look at the map. [Pulls up map on the computer]”

Katie:  “Great, we are scheduled to take a tour up to Glacier Point and we have to meet at the Lodge.”

Valet Guy:  “What time is your tour?”

Katie:  “10:00AM”

Valet Guy:  “Um, I hope you mean 10:00 tomorrow.  Route 120 is closed so it will take you at least 5 hours to get where you need to be.”

Katie:  “Crap.”

So, needless to say, Mike was not a happy camper once I broke the news to him that there was no possible way that we were making it into Yosemite in time for our tour.  We decided to start driving and see where we ended up.  Mike was slightly stressed at this point so he began to speed down Main Street only to be stopped 2 minutes later by Officer Swartzkopf of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department for going 55mph in a 35mph zone.  Oops.  Luckily we were able to avoid a speeding ticket, but not before being subjected to the usual police lecture consisting of:  “I’m really tempted to give you a ticket right now, you know that, right?”  ”Do you usually obey the law, son?”  “You can enjoy the scenery much better when you obey the speed limits.”   We sat through it like real champs, but it was not the greatest start to our day of adventure.

After our chat with the police officer, we were able to reschedule our Yosemite tour until the following morning at 10:00AM, so we decided to explore the area around our hotel.  Our first stop was at the overwhelmingly beautiful Mono Lake where there are these crazy rock forms called “tufa” sticking up out of the water.

After exploring the area and finding ourselves pretty much in the park by ourselves, we decided to grab our wedding ensembles from the car and capture our first official Wedding of Wonders photographs.  Although this particular location is not considered to be a “world wonder” per se, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to capture the beauty of the scenery for our wedding album.  We set up our tripod about 40 feet away from where we wanted to stand and then changed into our outfits.  Since the timer on our camera only lasts 10 seconds I’m sure we looked absolutely ridiculous having to run back and forth from the camera to our photo position, but somehow we managed to get a few great shots.  So, without further ado, here is our first official Wedding of Wonders photo:

Obviously you can’t tell from the picture, but it was almost 100 degrees when we were taking our photos [I have the sunburn to prove it], so Mike was ready to pass out wearing his tux.

After completing our photo shoot at Mono Lake, we continued driving along Route 395 and stopped along the way when the scenery warranted the production of parking, setting up the tripod and braving the heat.  Here are some of our favorite shots of the day:

Even though things started out a little rocky, we ended up having an amazing day of exploring Mono Lake and the surrounding area.  Tomorrow we are heading to Yosemite at 4:30AM so that we can make it in time for our 10:00AM tour (yikes!)  and after that, we’ll be heading to Napa Valley to prepare for our meal of a lifetime at The French Laundry.  Since we will be on the road for most of the day, our blogging may be delayed depending on how late we make it to Napa, but be sure to stay tuned for the second half of our California adventures!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 00:40 and is filed under California, General Awesomeness, Katie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.