Big Trees and Big Rocks

Since today was a summer weekend day, our goal was to get inside the park early to try and avoid the crowds. After a quick “breakfast included” at our hotel, we loaded up and checked out – we have this routine down-pat from last summer’s road trip! Driving through the foothills up into the mountains on winding Highway 41 meant that I was the designated driver.

We arrived at the south entrance gate just a little after 9:00AM, and headed straight over to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. As I had hoped, we got there early enough to snag one of the last spaces in the parking lot, before they closed the road to shuttle buses only. Thankfully the weather was still cool when we hiked out to see the Grizzly Giant and California Tunnel Tree.

Now that's a big tree!

Standing in the tunnel

From here we drove to the Wawona Visitor Center to purchase Jr. Ranger booklets for the boys and get my passport cancellations. I recently joined the National Park Travelers Club, a group of people who share the same affliction as me! The group maintains an online database, with all of the known locations for stamps. I’m writing about all of this because there was a note in the database about a stamp that had been reported missing, but presumed to be hidden in a drawer at Wawona VC. After sheepishly explaining this to the volunteer at the desk, he went in the back room and started searching through drawers for me. A few minutes later, he came back with my precious the missing stamp in hand – SCORE!

As we were leaving Wawona, we saw how many people were lined up to take the shuttle into the Mariposa Grove (even the parking lot at Wawona was full!). Definitely glad we got there early!

Unfortunately, this wasn't the last of our encounters with crowds inside Yosemite today. We continued driving further into the park and turned onto the road toward Glacier Point. We stopped at the overlook at Washburn Point for the boys' first-ever view of Half Dome (The last time R and I visited Yosemite was in 1997).

Half Dome, Vernal Falls (center), Nevada Falls (right)

At this point, everyone was pretty hungry, so we made sandwiches and ate "picnic" lunch in the minivan in the parking lot (another familiar routine from last summer!) It was only a little farther from here to Glacier Point, so when we finished eating we headed straight there. But for such a beautiful vantage point, it got pretty ugly pretty fast!

We pulled into the one-way loop through the parking area and found that it was totally congested with cars waiting for spaces to open up. One impatient driver nosed his car in front of ours, making the excuse that he wasn't waiting for a space and just wanted to get out. Yeah right, buddy - you and everyone else! There's only enough room for a single line of cars. How are you going to move any faster than the car in front of you?! Grrrr!

After one trip through the lot with no success, I let R and the boys out and headed back into the queue. Thankfully, this time I found a spot without incident. When I caught up to the guys, they were at the snack stand/gift shop eating (what else?!)... ice cream. Just a short walk out to the point rewarded us with this view:

Wow!

By the time we were ready to go, it was almost 3:00PM and the crowds had diminished significantly. I can't even imagine what Yosemite Valley down below must have been like during the same period of time. At least we're batting .500 for avoiding the masses so far!

I had wanted to hike out to Sentinel Dome, but it was hot and everyone was tired, so we skipped it. We'll just have to do it on our next visit! The check-in time for our cabin at Curry Village was 5:00PM, so we headed down with the hopes of getting our room early.  

But before we entered Yosemite Valley, we stopped at the Tunnel View overlook for this shot...

El Capitan (left), Half Dome in the distance (center),
Bridalveil Falls (right, but dry)

Our cabin wasn't ready when we checked in just after 4:00PM, so we went over to the swimming pool to cool off before it closed at 5:00PM.

When we came back to the registration desk, our room was ready. We parked nearby and dragged our stuff up to the cabin. Since it was a hard-sided cabin, we didn't have to store our food in a bear locker outside, but we had to make sure we got everything out of the car that might tempt a bear. The cabin was hot and stuffy from being closed up, but once we got the windows open and the fan (provided) going inside, it cooled off a bit.

We grabbed a pizza for dinner, then decided to ride the air-conditioned shuttle around the valley to get the lay of the land. Like the shuttle at Bryce Canyon or Zion NP, it's a great way to get around and reduce traffic congestion.

We arrived back at Curry Village in time to get a treat (you must know about our penchant for ice cream by now!) before the evening program started at the outdoor amphitheater. Tonight's topic was bears in the national parks. We learned that the lighter brown and cinnamon-colored bears here in Yosemite are still black bears. Guess bears on the west coast like to sport the sun-kissed look, too!

Good night, Half Dome!