Yosemite National Park

Hello all, Elijah here. We are now in Bishop, CA for the night, after having spent 5 nights in Yosemite. We had an awesome time there, and there's so much to talk about. To make it easier to follow along, I'm going to split it up by day.

Day 1:
Thursday, 6/23, we pulled into the park in the late evening after having taken a long (but totally worth it) detour to the Jelly Belly factory. We campsites already reserved for all 5 nights - the first 3 on the west side of the park, and the last 2 at the south end of the park. Our plan was to see if we could get ourselves into a walk-in, first-come first-served site in the famous Yosemite Valley, in the center of the park. When we were checking into the first site, however, the ranger told us that because campground reservations are insane in Yosemite (which could be a blog post itself) it would be in our best interest to just keep the sites we already had reserved because there was a great chance that nothing else would become available. We decided to take his advice, so we found our campsite, set up camp and made dinner, loaded our food in the bear locker, and settled in for an early night. Bear locker, you might ask? Apparently the black bears in Yosemite National Park are the smartest in the world. They have been known to break into cars when they detect some sort of scent, be it food, shampoo, sunscreen, even chapstick. The bear lockers are big metal boxes (about 3' x 2' x 4') that needs opposable thumbs to unlock. Everything with a scent is required to be stored in the bear locker provided to each site.

Day 2:
Since we knew how popular Yosemite National Park is, we figured that Yosemite Valley would be swamped with people on the weekend. Because of that, we decided it would be best to spend time in the Valley on Friday and Monday, and hopefully miss the bigger crowds. It seemed like a good idea until the first parking lot we pulled into - the trailhead for a short hike to the base of Bridalveil Falls - was full. Instead we had to park on the side of the road to get a chance to see Bridalveil Falls. I'm sure many of you are aware that the water levels in Yosemite are much higher this year than average because of all the snowfall tis past winter. Because of this, many of the waterfalls, including Bridalveil Falls, are gushing water. Laura wasn't able to get a picture at the base of the falls because there was so much mist spray.
As we left that trail, we started taking a good look around Yosemite Valley. It was absolutely incredible. It's difficult to put into words just how magnificent the scenery is. Everywhere you turned there was something awesome to look at, be it Yosemite Falls (highest waterfall in North America), Half Dome and El Capitan (both famous peaks), the lush greenery of the meadows on the valley floor, or all the fascinating rock formations.
To cut down on traffic and congestion on the park roads, Yosemite offers a free shuttle service around Yosemite Valley that stops at all the major points of interest. We took this shuttle up to Mirror Lake. Like most hikes in Yosemite, it was a fairly steep climb, and also like most hikes in Yosemite, it was well-worth the steep climb. Mirror Lake, years and years ago, used to be just a river. However, two huge boulders have since fallen into that river to create the lake. The river still feeds and drains the lake, but the lake itself is quite breathtaking. The water was incredibly clear, and the lake is surrounded by huge cliffs of granite. We spent the early afternoon hiking around the lake, and went as far as we could past it before we were turned around by signs reading, "CAUTION: Rock Fall Area. Trail Closed." On the way back we stumbled upon a sea of cairns. For those of you that don't know, a cairn is a small rock sculpture usually used by hikers to mark a trail. This mass of cairns, however, was obviously for decoration. As we wandered through them, being impressed by the different ways people were able to balance rocks together, I decided to build one for the two of us. It stood for about as long as it took Laura to take the picture because afterwards I got greedy and tried to add more rocks, which knocked the whole thing over.
A ranger told us that, for whatever reason, everyone always leaves Yosemite Valley at about 5:00 pm everyday, and that makes a huge traffic jam. So we wouldn't have to deal with the traffic later on, we decided to go for another hike up to a viewpoint of Upper Fall, the first half of Yosemite Falls. The hike was only a mile and a half, but the trail gains about 1,500 feet in elevation. Because of that, the trail was very steep, and once we were high enough there was little break from the sun. But like all the other trails in Yosemite, the juice was certainly worth the squeeze. Once we were at the viewpoint, we could feel the mist from the waterfall, even though we were still a ways away from it.
We were hoping to fit another hike in that day, but we were pretty beat from the Upper Fall trail so we decided to call it quits for the day.
That night we heard the first rumblings of an air mattress pump in the campground. As we soon learned, apparently 10:30 at night is a great time to inflate an air mattress, and they can only be deflated between the hours of 5:30 am and 6:30 am.

Day 3:
We woke up early on Saturday and headed for Toulumne Grove, home to some giant sequoia trees. It was a very nice, easy hike on a warm morning. Laura's birding eye is really improving, as she spotted a white-headed woodpecker AND a western tanager (insert Sean Carroll's excitement here). Once we got to the grove, we were stunned with how big the trees were. Costal Redwoods are the tallest tree in the world, but because of there width, Giant Sequoias are the largest. In fact, they are the largest organism by volume on Earth. It took us a while to really take in how massive they are. There weren't many in the grove, just as there aren't many anywhere that they grow. That's because even though Giant Sequoias can grow to over 250 ft. tall and over 30 ft. wide, their seed is only about the size of a single oat. Therefore, it's tough for their seeds to germinate and make new trees.
After the Toulumne Grove we headed for the Glacier Point area of the park, which is just south of Yosemite Valley as the western tanager flies. Unfortunately, we are not western tanagers, and there is no road that conveniently connects the two areas. We got a little lost in the park looking for the road that would take us there, but finally ended up at the trailhead to Sentinel Dome, another large peak in the park. It was another easy hike with some slight inclines before the top of the dome. Getting to the top required a steep climb through ankle-deep snow. That's right, snow. the view from the top of the dome was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Standing in one spot and turning 360 degrees, we could see El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, Vernal and Nevada Falls, and the Sierra Nevada range off in the distance. I spent a lot of time trying to take it all in, but it was almost overwhelming.
On the way down from the Sentinel Dome trail, we tried to take the Taft Point Trail, which shares a trailhead with Sentinel Dome. Unfortunately the trail was covered in snow, and there were signs of strong warning posted by the rangers advising people to not hike on the trail. Instead we headed back to our campsite for an early dinner and a good night's sleep.

Day 4:
On Sunday we moved to our new campsite at the south end of the park. Before we checked into our site we did another hike in the Mariposa Grove, which is famous in Yosemite for its absolutely enormous Giant Sequoias. These trees really live up to the name "Giant" Sequoia. It was unbelievable how big they were.
After the Mariposa Grove we headed to the trailhead of yet another hike. This was an easy three and a half mile meadow loop. In the beginning of the hike we found the tiniest baby bird I have ever seen on the ground. It looked like it was a robin chick, but it couldn't have been bigger than a half dollar. I set it off to the side of the trail so it wouldn't be trampled in case the mother decided to rescue it. The rest of the hike was quite pleasant. To top it all off, we found a good sitting rock overlooking a meadow, and saw a red-breasted sapsucker.

Day 5:
On Monday, we were hoping to be able to ascend Half Dome, but were unable to. Since it is such a popular hike, the park gives out a limited number of permits to do the hike, usually well in advance. Unfortunately, there were no permits for us to do that hike. Instead we spent the day hiking up to Vernal and Nevada Falls. The trail took no time getting extremely steep. We followed along a river, got a good view of Vernal Fall (the lower of the two), and came to a junction in the trail. We decided to take the longer yet less steep John Muir Trail up to Nevada Fall. On the way up we had to step to the side of the trail to let a mule train pass. Finally at the top, we could see a looooong ways down. The trail opens up at the top of Nevada Fall, so we found a spot along the river with plenty of shade to eat lunch. Laura then insisted on laying in the sun for a few minutes, which I was much too impatient for. While she laid in the sun, I took a peak over the fall, but quickly stepped back from the fence when I noticed how far down it was just passed the fence.
After taking a few pictures, we began our descent. At the junction we decided to take the famed Mist Trail down. It's named the Mist Trail because of the mist that usually comes of Vernal Fall as you are on the trail. However, because the water levels are so high, it was more like the rain trail. We got absolutely soaked coming down the 600 slippery, granite steps. It was somewhat pleasant though, because it was such a hot day.
We made it back down to Yosemite Valley just in time for the 5 o'clock rush hour out of the valley. We figured we'd better stick around and let the traffic thin out, and suddenly had an unexplainable craving for Choco Tacos. We quickly made for the Yosemite Valley Store, only to find there were, unfortunately, no Chaco Tacos. To keep our spirits up Laura got an ice cream cookie sandwich and I got a pint of mint chocolate brownie ice cream. Both were consumed within a matter of minutes.
On the drive back to our campsite, we decided to take a detour to the Glacier Point area to watch the sunset. Glacier Point looks out over the whole valley, so again we could see everything. That was nice, but the sunset was sort of a let-down. In any case, it was a great ending to the awesome time we had in an awesome park.

After passing snow on the ground during our drive out of the park, we are now in the desert, only about 20 miles from Death Valley. We're driving across Death Valley tomorrow on our way to Las Vegas, then it's on to the Grand Canyon the next day. We will still have to make a decision on whether we want to use our permit to hike into the canyon, or just stay on the rim where we also have campground reservations. That decision is weather-depending, and will be made pretty much on the spot when we show up at the Grand Canyon on Thursday.

Take care.

Elijah