The quote of the day: It’s another kind of gorgeous. And it certainly is! Every day is a new kind of wonderment. We thought Alaskan and Canadian mountains
were incredible, but now we are at Yosemite and the mountains are straight up
out of the ground, straight sheets of rock face, smooth and dangerous, right in
your face! We didn’t get here in time
for a first come, first serve campsite for the night but that is okay! We have been pretty good about going with the
flow! :)
Yosemite is also a very BUSY place. There are tons of people everywhere, walking
and cycling and driving. All kinds of
great people and then those that literally stop on a dime and open their car
door so they can take a picture, which means we had to brake and stop. They looked at us like it was our
fault!! And parking is a privilege. We did find our first spot sort of easily and
did our first hike to the Bridal Veil Falls.
LOVELY! BUT since it is the first
in the park (more or less) it was so crowded. It was hard to imagine that many people,
all jockeying for parking and walking spaces!
We decided the best way to see large
chunks of Yosemite Valley was to park once and bike around, so we found a spot
we thought looked good for parking (We were the first to park here, but there
were two smaller RVs parked on the other side of the tree so we thought perhaps
it as okay?) and unloaded our bikes and took off. We could see a lot this way as we didn’t have
to drive and park. We did have to stop
and brake for other bicyclists, pedestrians, cars, trucks, more people,
etc. We did hop off from time to time to
wander up various trails: Lower Yosemite
Falls, Mirror Lake, and too many to mention.
We decided to leave that area and drive up
to the trailhead for Sentinel Dome.
John-Paul and family hiked this last year and said it was a nice hike,
and it was. Considered “moderate” it
meandered about 1.1 miles and the reward was a stupendous view—a 360 degree
view! We were looking DOWN on even the
Upper Yosemite Falls! HOLY COW! It was truly breath-taking and really not
too hard to hike! Highly recommended if
anyone is traveling to Yosemite! We
drove up to Glacier Point to see even more from the top. Looking down onto Yosemite Valley was
unnerving as you didn’t really see people as they were way too small. The hotel even looked tiny and the cars
looked like ants! There were such nice
people up there: a young girl who was
just smiling and gushing how “real” everything was and so intense (we took her
picture for her) and a family visiting from UK.
The mom was born in Scotland, the Dad in Ireland, but the kids were born
and they live in England, sort of close to where Shakespeare lived. Interesting!
They flew in, and rented a car and were leaving from Los Angeles in a
week.
We noticed as we drove DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
back into the valley so we could leave that there were really hardly any people
and cars left! We asked at the gate and
this park never closes! So it would seem
to make more sense to go early in the morning, head out around noon or one, and
then go back in the evening! I would be
more afraid of bears even though we didn’t see any; personally, if I were a
bear, I would hightail it out just because there are people literally and figuratively
crawling all over the place. We could
probably even sleep in our truck and no one would notice! :)
It occurred to me later that people could
actually live out of their vehicles in San Francisco. We slept in ours, which wouldn’t be idea on a
daily basis. But we have encountered
some really amazing tricked out vans! A
gentleman at Half Moon Bay State Beach was cooking over a small cook stove in
his van and I noticed he had a bed set up as well in there. Everything you need! The family we met at Prudhoe Bay had
converted a 15 passenger van to be completely self-contained for a family of 5,
everything! We also met a couple that
did the same thing to their 15 passenger van.
Then a person could conceivably stop anywhere! No one would really notice.
We really lucked out and found a campsite
only a few miles/minutes from the entry.
It is an RV site so our neighbors are RVs. One family is from Iowa and they are taking
the entire summer to travel, and the other from Switzerland-they flew into New
York to visit and then San Francisco and rented an RV. They are driving down to Costa Rico to visit
their daughter and then flying home. Our
“back” neighbor is also from Switzerland and are renting a van that is simply
converted with a simple stove and sink and refrigerator “drawer” but the
outsides are painted really neat! Peace
signs, and flowers, and such.
We are going to go for our final BIG hike
tomorrow, to the top of Yosemite Falls.
It will be challenging but we have tackled bigger. Wish us luck!
We’ll let you know how it goes.
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