The forecast was for rain and snow but it got moved back to Monday afternoon from Sunday night! Driving into the park was saw notices that both Tioga Pass and Glacier Point roads would be closed from 4pm that day. Because it was the last day of the long weekend, we could park at the Happy Isles parking lot with no competition.
Just the walk out from the car to Happy Isles was beautiful, with leaves on the ground. At Happy Isles, we saw a crane on the river. And then walked past the Mist trail trailhead onto the Mirror Lake trail, eschewing the road even though the road was shorter. This quickly proved to be a wise move, as we saw a bobcat! This one was bold, walking out onto the road eventually and out of our sight.
When we got to Mirror Lake, sure enough the lake was completely dry. We stayed on the trail to do the loop anyway, and were rewarded with occasional places where the views opened up.
On the return, we started to feel raindrops, and hurried back towards the car. Once at the car, Boen complained about being hungry so we ate a bunch of snacks before heading into the car for what would be a long drive.
But Yosemite was not done with us yet! On the way leaving the park, we saw a huge patch of gorgeous trees and had to stop the car for 20 minutes to get out and take photos.
It actually snowed on us as we exited the park via the Big Oak Flat entrance, but the snow didn't stick to the ground so I didn't have to deploy snow chains. By the time we got down to 3000' the snow had turned into rain. We had lunch near Manteca and stopped at the Costco there to refuel. Driving back over the windmills near Patterson pass we saw beautiful sunset views. It was great.
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