The end of May was a fun (and busy) couple of weeks. My brother Andrew and I left Idaho en route to Lake Tahoe, which has been our home for the past 4 years while we attended school at Sierra Nevada College. Now, after finishing classes in December, we were returning to participate in our graduation ceremony! It was a great time – awesome to see friends from school and hang with family while celebrating a pretty big milestone.

We didn’t spend much time at the Lake after graduation, as we headed down to the Bay Area to begin a 3-day, 225 mile bike ride from Sunol to Paso Robles with our Dad. It actually all went smoother than I expected and besides a sore butt after our first (90 mile) day, I felt strong for the entire ride. It was nice to experience via bike a gorgeous part of California that you would not usually see in a car as the route took all back roads.

After the ride, we left the Bay and headed for an old favorite spot – Yosemite’s Tioga Pass. Having just come from graduation and a road bike ride, we weren’t properly prepared for this unplanned stop. With plenty of snow left to play on, we found ourselves wishing we had brought ski and ice gear. Without crampons, there was no way to access most of the alpine rock routes, either. The trip ended up being more of a scenic tour as we enjoyed a sunset on the smooth granite domes of Tuolumne Meadows, camped in the van, and then proceeded back down the pass in the morning, where we then enjoyed views of the beautiful and strange Mono Lake. What looks like a desolate martian landscape is actually home to an extremely productive ecosystem of trillions of brine shrimp, algae, and millions of migratory birds.

With its high deserts, martian lakes, ghost towns, and snowy peaks, California’s Eastern Sierra is one of the most treasured spots in the state.