5 routes to Reno

There are 5 routes to Reno from Yosemite. Tioga Pass Road being the most famous one. Caltrans website became very familiar to us as we constantly monitored which one of the four closed ones might open just for our trip. Tioga Pass was also the highest point so it was not likely to open during our visit. However, some of the others (State Routes 108, 4, and 88) had a good chance of being opened. Especially State Route 88 was just about to be opened. To our disappointment, even 88 was open for cars with snow chains only. As I had no clue of how the road conditions were, I didn't even try it as I thought we would be sent back. When we got to Reno we found out that it actually had been driveable without chains. So we took the route which had the lowest elevation, State route 50. Also State Route 50 was a California Scenic Byway. The scenic byways are a collection of scenic roads which used to be included in byways.org website. The funding for the website was discontinued by the US government so Scenic byways website continues the work but as an open source initiative.

Before we got to State Route 50 we drove past very beautiful California landscapes. We drove along State Route 49 through Jackson and many other old silver mining towns. Jackson had a very nice Antiques center as well. State Routes 49 and 50 are also part of the State Scenic Highway routes. I guess that's the official classification.