DFT16 - Yosemite
Oh Yosemite...where do I start....Let's just say that I wasn't as excited about Yosemite than I was for Sequoia. I told Daniel I was only in this trip for the Big Trees ;) However, Yosemite is supposedly the best National Park of all time...so why not check it out and see if its all that its cracked up to be. I'm not going to lie when I tell you that Yosemite and I didn't get off the best start, but by the end it wasn't all that terrible.
We arrived on Sunday afternoon...it was finally 3:30ish when we made it in to the park and we went immediately to our campground. At first the campground itself wasn't too terrible, but it was on the far west side of the park and at least a 45 minute drive into the valley. We couldn't make reservations for Yosemite until March and when I was trying to make the reservations this was the only campground that would pop up, so I took what I could get. After we got our camp set up we started driving around. We didn't really know where we were going or what we wanted to do, so it took us a while to get our bearings. We had made reservations to eat dinner that night at the Historic Ahwahnee Hotel. That night the moon was almost full and was so bright that it was reflecting off the granite walls and was absolutely stunning...unfortunately I couldn't get a good pic. Once we got back to camp, we realized quickly that quite hours we not observed in our campground.
Since the visitors center had been closed when we made it to the valley the night before, we wanted to go there as soon as they opened on Monday. We made it into the valley around 8am. First, we walked to Bridalveil Fall and drove around taking pictures of El Cap and Yosemite Falls until the visitors center opened at 9am. After we left the visitors center we started for our first hike in Yosemite....Upper Yosemite Falls. It was 3.6 miles to the top and 3.6 down. Oh and did I mention that you climb 2700 ft to the top of the fall. And lastly it was 90 plus degrees with very little shade on the trail. Now I've climbed some steep trails in the Smokies, but I def. thought I was going to die hiking on Monday. And the best view of the fall wasn't even when you made it to the top..it was half way up the trail. We both got slightly sunburned while hiking and the sad part was we had the sunscreen in my bag the whole time. We started hiking around 10ish and we didn't finish until 4:30ish. After dinner we hiked a mile to Mirror Lake...which was the mosquito capital of the world. When we finished hiking we had to sit at the shuttle stop for 30 mins before the next one came back around. We were both getting eat up until nice young family came up to wait with us and saw me waving my arms around in the arm like a crazy person and asked us if we wanted some Off....we had our own bug spray, but left it in the car. On the bright side I have now been able to try Viv's bug bite essential oil mix and I must say it def. works. As soon as a bite starts itching I rub some on and the bite doesn't ever itch again. So I may be a believer in this essential oil stuff....Viv go ahead and sign me up for a starter set! We made it back to camp around 10 and all I wanted to do was go to sleep....however a new group had moved in behind us.....13 year old Boy Scouts. And again they did not want to observe quite hours....it was 12:30 before they ever stopped talking....I couldn't ever figure out why their adult leader wasn't telling them to be quite and I learned the next morning that their adults slept with ear plugs in. As annoying as they were they did do some rather entertaining impressions of Obama and Trump.
Tuesday we decided to spend most of the day in Tuolumne Meadows. The park ranger on that side of the park was really nice and told us about some great hikes. We started by hiking 1 mile to Gaylor Lake. Since it was in the North part of the park it was cooler and still had some snow on the ground. The hike was nice and the lake was beautiful with ice still in it. We could have hiked passed Gaylor Lake, but the trail was covered in snow and we were a little skeptical about hiking and not knowing where the trail was. On this hike we met a very interesting young lady from Brooklyn. Her name is Sarah and she is by herself just driving around to see whatever she wants in California before going home. She has been a lot of the places we have been or are going, so we carried on a nice conversation with her. She is hoping to come to Asheville and the Smokies soon, and we plan to meet up and potentially hike with her when she makes it down. Once we finished that hike we went to start another one called Lembert Dome. It was said to be a beautiful view at the top, but there was a huge rock that you basically had to climb up, since my knee as been bothering me on our hikes I wasn't looking forward to the walk down. In addition, I was slightly tired and grumpy from my lack of sleep due to the boy scouts. Daniel chose to do the hike on his own and I sat in a chair at the bottom of the trail and read my book and took a nice little nap. I'm sure I missed out on a great hike, but my nap was pretty good. We finished off our sight seeing on Tuesday by going to see Hetch Hetchy Dam. It is the water source for San Francisco that was built right in the middle of the park. John Muir was completely against the building of this dam in a national park and tried to fight it, but eventually he lost. Some say it lead to his early death a year after Hetch Hetchy started being built. Tuesday night we showered for the first time since Sunday morning. Its actually kinda funny...while eating dinner Monday night we asked some people what time the showers closed and they told us 8 or 9. Since we hiked Mirror Lake it was 8:45 before we made it back to the car and decided not to go try to shower because they would either be closed or closing. Well it was 7:55 on Tuesday and we were both in desperate need of a shower and we drove on over...guess what....the showers don't close until 10pm....so we could have taken one on Monday..haha. We did end up getting free showers because no one was there to take our money, and we just got in line and went right in. The boy scouts were rather quite Tuesday night...I guess they were finally worn out from the adventures.
Wednesday ended up being my favorite day in the park. We took a tour bus ride to the top of Glacier Point. Once we got to Glacier Point we hiked 8 miles down back into the Valley on the Panorama Trail. It was a very nice hike...mostly down :) and we had amazing views of the park. However, we are both convinced that Yosemite needs to reevaluate their mileage, because that was the longest 8 miles ever. Daniel's garmin watch said we hiked close to 10 miles. The last 3 miles of the trail were part of the John Muir trail, so Daniel is excited he gets to say that he hiked along the John Muir Trail. After dinner Wednesday night we went to the Yosemite Theater to watch a Lee Stetson program called "John Muir - Conversations with The Tramp". Lee Stetson has narrated the voice of John Muir in the Ken Burns National Park Documentary and he has written many books on the life of John Muir. It was an actual live theater production and the focus of it was on John Muir's fight against Hetch Hetchy. It was very nicely done and interesting to hear....even better that we had been to Hetch Hetchy so we understood what he was talking about.
So all in all Yosemite is not a bad park...I personally don't believe that it is the best park ever....but if you have the chance it is def. one to see.
Since the visitors center had been closed when we made it to the valley the night before, we wanted to go there as soon as they opened on Monday. We made it into the valley around 8am. First, we walked to Bridalveil Fall and drove around taking pictures of El Cap and Yosemite Falls until the visitors center opened at 9am. After we left the visitors center we started for our first hike in Yosemite....Upper Yosemite Falls. It was 3.6 miles to the top and 3.6 down. Oh and did I mention that you climb 2700 ft to the top of the fall. And lastly it was 90 plus degrees with very little shade on the trail. Now I've climbed some steep trails in the Smokies, but I def. thought I was going to die hiking on Monday. And the best view of the fall wasn't even when you made it to the top..it was half way up the trail. We both got slightly sunburned while hiking and the sad part was we had the sunscreen in my bag the whole time. We started hiking around 10ish and we didn't finish until 4:30ish. After dinner we hiked a mile to Mirror Lake...which was the mosquito capital of the world. When we finished hiking we had to sit at the shuttle stop for 30 mins before the next one came back around. We were both getting eat up until nice young family came up to wait with us and saw me waving my arms around in the arm like a crazy person and asked us if we wanted some Off....we had our own bug spray, but left it in the car. On the bright side I have now been able to try Viv's bug bite essential oil mix and I must say it def. works. As soon as a bite starts itching I rub some on and the bite doesn't ever itch again. So I may be a believer in this essential oil stuff....Viv go ahead and sign me up for a starter set! We made it back to camp around 10 and all I wanted to do was go to sleep....however a new group had moved in behind us.....13 year old Boy Scouts. And again they did not want to observe quite hours....it was 12:30 before they ever stopped talking....I couldn't ever figure out why their adult leader wasn't telling them to be quite and I learned the next morning that their adults slept with ear plugs in. As annoying as they were they did do some rather entertaining impressions of Obama and Trump.
Tuesday we decided to spend most of the day in Tuolumne Meadows. The park ranger on that side of the park was really nice and told us about some great hikes. We started by hiking 1 mile to Gaylor Lake. Since it was in the North part of the park it was cooler and still had some snow on the ground. The hike was nice and the lake was beautiful with ice still in it. We could have hiked passed Gaylor Lake, but the trail was covered in snow and we were a little skeptical about hiking and not knowing where the trail was. On this hike we met a very interesting young lady from Brooklyn. Her name is Sarah and she is by herself just driving around to see whatever she wants in California before going home. She has been a lot of the places we have been or are going, so we carried on a nice conversation with her. She is hoping to come to Asheville and the Smokies soon, and we plan to meet up and potentially hike with her when she makes it down. Once we finished that hike we went to start another one called Lembert Dome. It was said to be a beautiful view at the top, but there was a huge rock that you basically had to climb up, since my knee as been bothering me on our hikes I wasn't looking forward to the walk down. In addition, I was slightly tired and grumpy from my lack of sleep due to the boy scouts. Daniel chose to do the hike on his own and I sat in a chair at the bottom of the trail and read my book and took a nice little nap. I'm sure I missed out on a great hike, but my nap was pretty good. We finished off our sight seeing on Tuesday by going to see Hetch Hetchy Dam. It is the water source for San Francisco that was built right in the middle of the park. John Muir was completely against the building of this dam in a national park and tried to fight it, but eventually he lost. Some say it lead to his early death a year after Hetch Hetchy started being built. Tuesday night we showered for the first time since Sunday morning. Its actually kinda funny...while eating dinner Monday night we asked some people what time the showers closed and they told us 8 or 9. Since we hiked Mirror Lake it was 8:45 before we made it back to the car and decided not to go try to shower because they would either be closed or closing. Well it was 7:55 on Tuesday and we were both in desperate need of a shower and we drove on over...guess what....the showers don't close until 10pm....so we could have taken one on Monday..haha. We did end up getting free showers because no one was there to take our money, and we just got in line and went right in. The boy scouts were rather quite Tuesday night...I guess they were finally worn out from the adventures.
Comments
Post a Comment