A few miles further we located a nice campground. At $6.50 a night, you just couldn't beat it. For those just dying to drive into central Oregon's dry sage covered wasteland just to camp here, this is the Yellowpine Campground. Just a bit further up the road is the Wetmore Campground and there is a very nice paved trail between the two. After setting up camp, we walked the trail between the campgrounds. There were about five other campers in our campground and none in Wetmore. It was a beautiful area surrounded by dry unappealing flatlands. The road climbs up into a small forest area and then descends back down shortly thereafter. The two campgrounds are in the small higher forested area.

The next day we drove on to McCall Idaho. After a good nights sleep, we drove to Burgdorf. The area of Burgdorf is littered with rent-a-cabins in various states of decay. If you could scrape all the cabins and couple homes out of this area, it would make a spectacular place to live. Unfortunately the incredible scenary is tainted by a scene straight out of a Jeff Foxworthy routine. There is a natural hot spring here too and they charge per head to go in it. It looked to me like there were already enough life forms living in the water without me paying to add mine.

As I mentioned at the start, we really didn't break the cameras out much on this trip. We explored each area we went through, but didn't find anything we really got excited about. McCall was a small Lake Tahoe like tourist trap and didn't inspire any desire to live there.

After looking through Nevada's "National Forest's" we drove straight to Reno for the night. Someone needs to contact the Nevada land managers and explain to them that calling a completely treeless area a "Forest," is a bit silly. I suppose names like "National Dirt" or "National Sagebrush" would be fine depending on the area. This was the longest drive segment of our trip. We went straight from McCall, through several Nevada "National Forests" and on to Reno. Are any of you surprised I didn't take pictures? If so, I'll film some dirt in Sacramento and post it for you.

Reno was thick with smoke and we still had time off, so I suggested we drive south down HWY395 to find clearer air and camp at a free campground I knew about. In the morning we headed out, stopping to watch a movie in Carson City before clearing most of the smoke south of Mono Lake. The next day we decided to drive into Yosemite and wander around. We had lunch at Tenaya Lake and then decided to hike to May Lake. I didn't know there was a road that took you within one mile of May Lake, so we left our car at Tenaya Lake and started hiking down the road to the trail. After hiking a couple miles up the trail we eventually arrived at the May Lake trailhead parking lot. Doh! Hey there is a road coming in here! Chalking this error up to "getting some exercise," we continued on the additional mile to May Lake. This is Tenaya Lake from the trail.
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