Exploring Yosemite National Park

Yosemite makes you simple. You spend most of the time with your mouth hanging open and the only word that you can come up with is ‘Wow’! I am not even going to try and describe how incredible, majestic, inspiring it is. Hopefully the pictures give some sense of what we saw. Some of the highlights for us:

Day 1
Well, we hoped it would stop raining and it did. We were hoping for sunshine. Snow never entered our minds. But it snowed – all day!

The park under snow was amazing. Granite cliffs (dominated by El Capitan), snow-covered pines, rushing rivers, waterfalls, beautiful rock formations – all highlighted by snow. Tim did a great job of putting snow chains on the car (I sat inside the car and pretended to study the map – he gave me enough time to re-draw the map!).

We hiked to Vernal Falls – we had the path to ourselves for most of the way. Each bend in the path brought another spectacular view. At times the snow was ankle height (which meant soaked feet!). Skis would have helped sometimes on the way down.

We got back to our hotel around 7pm after a long drive on windy mountain roads. We saw a baby deer and a bob-cat on the way.

Day 2
Our wish for sun was granted. The park under brilliant sunshine and clear skies, with snow everywhere, was also amazing. We took a different route into the park – taking us to around 6,000 feet. We saw a coyote on the drive.

Today’s highlight was a 6km walk to the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias at the southern end of the park. The road is closed in winter so in some places we were knee-deep in snow.

The trees are magnificent. They are over 1,500 years old and can grow up to 115m high and 8m wide. We had them all to ourselves, which was very special. During the two-hour walk we saw only six other people.

We were in the car for the rest of the day – driving west towards Monterey Bay. We drove through farmland (strong scent of garlic in some places) and strip-mall central, offering drive-through everything – Starbucks, Ben & Jerry’s and even Chinese food. We didn’t stop.