So the other weekend I drove to Yosemite with my mother/father in law, my wife, and our kid to drop off my in laws as they were off on a 3 week hike of the John Muir Trail.  On the drive home I got to thinking to myself, “My in laws are hiking the John Muir Trail, they (and my wife) last year hiked to the top of Half Dome.  My wife has done a trail marathon in addition to other 5k, 10k, and half marathons.  Its my turn to do something crazy like that.”  So while we were driving down Hwy 120 I decided I was going to ride my road bicycle from my house in South San Jose over Tioga Pass to Lee Vining.

According to the route I drew up in Google Maps, my friend and I are looking at an approx. 240 mile ride, climbing approx. 18,000 ft over 2 or 3 days.  It looks like I’ve got some major training to do in the next few months, since we’ve got the ride tentatively scheduled for sometime in May.

Otherwise we had a pretty good trip.  Our two year old decided after his nap he wanted to throw a big tantrum, but after he got to pet some dogs he was better.

A few random photographs from the trip:

View of Upper Yosemite Falls from the car as we were heading into the Valley.

We camped out at the Wawona campground for the night and let Adam do what he loves doing – playing in the dirt.

My in laws as they were about to leave on their hike.

Adam loves water, and this was his reaction as he saw the Yosemite falls before we hiked to them.

Yes, he climbed all the rocks on his own, I was just there making sure he didn’t fall.

In the midst of tantrum #1 from being too tired and needing to take a nap.

This little guy posed for us for a little while.  I was wishing I had my 70-200 instead of just my 85mm f1.4 lens.

And this is why he is called the “Dirt Monster”