Whitney Portal

A couple of years ago Dave went to Mt.Whitney to hike with his brother. When he got home he talked so much about how beautiful the Whitney portal is. It is the trail head to Whitney and the place where everyone camps to acclimatize to the altitude before heading to the top.  It was only 14 miles out of our way so we decided it was worth going to see, even if it would add an hour or more to our trip. To try and get there from home would be a 7 hour trip each way and never really something we'd make our way to see, I'm sure. I'm glad we did go. It was breathtaking. Hard to capture in photos. 

We didn't tell the kids about our little detour b/c we didn't want any grumbling. As we were climbing up the mountian the kids said, "wow, this is really amazing. I don't remember this part of the drive before....."

The main highway between reno and LA is 99% ugly desert. So as you climb it is through sage brush and rocks. Then you get up to the portal and it is beautiful big trees and mountain air. It was really neat!

 You could hear the sound of water rushing all around us as the snow was melting and there were waterfalls all around. Incredible!

 Poor sweet lex was not dressed for this stop. She was in her jammies dress with just a light sweatshirt.

 view of Mt. Whitney (in the back) as we started making our way down to the valley.

View of the valley from the portal. I love how the clouds shade the ground.

Another view of whitney from a little lower.

 Some of the crazy rock formations we saw as we left the valley were very neat.

Our drive to Reno was 10:30-8:45 with two stops. Our drive home was a bit longer. 10:30-11:30.

In addition to stopping to see the Whitney portal our drive was slower than before because our speedometer on the car had broken. We had to be extra conservative and be sure to stay with the cars around us so that we wouldn't get going too fast. I think on average this caused us to go a little slower than before.

All in all it was a great trip.