California Mountain Road Trip - May 2013 - Part 2 - Crossing the Sierras

We spent the first 4 nights of the trip on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and on Friday we crossed over the crest of the mountains on Ebbetts Pass Road (California State Highway 4) on our way to Lake Tahoe.

Still on the western side, we stopped for a hike at Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

The California State Parks Department, with the help of many volunteers, maintains a nice interpretive trail through the trees. The explanation for this next image gives an idea of just how big these trees really are. That's not a whole tree lying on the ground, but rather, it's just a branch that fell from one.

California State Highway 4 is also known as the Ebbetts Pass National Scenic Byway. I can understand how it got the Scenic Byway designation; the "highway" label is a bit tougher to understand, since for quite a few miles the roadway is too narrow to even have a center stripe. Heather and I agree that this is one of the best roads we've driven.  Not very many spots wide enough to pull over for pictures though.

There are several alpine lakes along the way. That's Heather in the blue sweater sitting on the lakeshore towards the center of this next image.

The Pacific Crest Trail crosses the road here, on its way from Mexico to Canada.

The trees thin out as you head downslope on the eastern side of the pass.

On the way to Lake Tahoe we crossed a few high-elevation meadows and another mountain pass.

Click here to see more images from Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Click here to see more images from the Ebbetts Pass National Scenic Byway.