Yosemite National Park

Wow! Yosemite National Park is simply stunning. It's popular for good reason.

This park was a little different. I had visited a few days before the rest of the family to hike Half Dome. This gave me a little bit of advance knowledge on where we should spend our time.

Yosemite is a glacial valley on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is the range between CA and NV. Being a valley in the midst of large mountains, it has a lot of snow melt water flowing through it, especially in the spring (things tend to dry up in the fall). This water enters the valley through scores of waterfalls. And these waterfalls are huge! The most famous is Yosemite Falls, but that's probably just because it's the easiest to see without leaving your car. Those willing to hike a bit are rewarded with many more, some of which are arguably more impressive than Yosemite Falls.

But that's not all.

Being a glacial valley, it has all kind of sheer cliffs on the sides (glacial-carved valleys are typically U-shaped, and river-carved valleys are typically V-shaped, though there are exceptions). This leads to many famous rock formations, with El Capitan being the most famous and Half Dome right behind it.

So you have sheer cliffs, amazing rock formations, and water flowing down from everywhere. Yeah, it's amazing.

The park is large, so we broke our visit into two days. I left work early on Friday so we could spend some time in the valley. The park encompasses much more than the valley, but the valley is what most people are there to see, which also means it's the most crowded. Our hope was that getting there in the evening would help alleviate the crowds.

Using some of my knowledge from the Half Dome hike, I suggested a hike to Vernal Falls. This was the first 1.5 miles of the Half Dome hike. If we were feeling up to it, we could continue on to Nevada Falls, another mile up the trail (and yes, I do mean up; my legs were not happy to be back here so soon).

The trail to Vernal Fall is called the Mist Trail, and it is aptly named.

Only the last few hundred yards before the falls are in the mist, but it's enough to soak those who want to get soaked.

Once we made it to the top of Vernal Falls, we collectively decided it was far enough. It was getting late, and I knew from my Half Dome hike that the portion of the trail on to Nevada Falls was quite strenuous.

See that bucket? Any "Mysterious Benedict Society" fans out there?

We had a little bit of twilight left when we got back to the car, so we swung by Yosemite Falls. It's a two-part waterfall, and you can choose to walk to the bottom of the lower falls via a paved trail, hike to the bottom of the upper falls, or hike to the top of the upper falls. Given the time of day and the fact that we had just hiked to a different waterfall, we opted for the paved walk to the bottom of the lower falls. It was not strenuous, which was a relief to my legs!

Our plan for Saturday was to spend time out of the valley. We figured the valley would be slammed, being a beautiful Saturday during a three day weekend. But we didn't quite get to see everything the night before, so we decided to take our chances and head back in for a bit in the morning.

Before doing so, we took a detour to Tunnel View. This is an expansive view of the entire valley that hits you as you emerge from a tunnel. It if often a person's first view of Yosemite, and it was strongly recommended to us by some locals we met a few weeks back. Unfortunately, it was on a different road into the park than the one we took, and accessing that road from outside the park would have added about 90 minutes to our drive. So we decided to compromise and come in the closer entrance but backtrack to Tunnel View. This only added about 15 minutes to the trip. Plus, we had already been in the valley the night before, so there was no chance for Tunnel View to be our first view of the valley anyway.

Was the view worth the trouble? I don't know. I dropped the rest of the family off while I went looking for parking, and I never did find any before picking them back up. So worth it or not, I can say with confidence that it's at least popular!

Julie got a picture of the kids, and you can see El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Falls. The ability to see so many of the famous landmarks at one time is one reason Tunnel View is so popular.

After picking Julie and the kids back up, we headed down into the valley, stopping a few times to just enjoy the scenery and the beautiful weather. The kids played by the Yosemite River, we hung out at the visitor center and watched the park film, and Asher and I did a short hike to the base of El Capitan.

After that, it was time to leave the valley (and the masses of people) behind. We wanted to visit Tuolumne Meadows. The road to the meadows had just opened for the season the day before, and it was the end of May!

One thing we've come to understand about California is that the elevation plays a key role in the weather. I can feel you rolling your eyes, but understand that I've spent my entire life in very flat places close to sea level (though not always close to sea). In California, it can be 100 degrees in the Central Valley and showing in the mountains.

We very quickly noticed a change. We stopped at an overlook on the way up, and we had to put our coats on. Even farther up the road, we started seeing patches of snow on the sides. By the time we got to the meadows, it was in the low 40s, down from around 70 in the valley. Needless to say, the meadows were not in bloom yet, but I'm told they are beautiful when they are, so I'd love to try again someday.

While the chilly air put a damper on wildflower viewing, it didn't put a damper on the kids' spirits.

With all the amazing things we've seen over the past 15 months, some of their best memories have come from the three patches of snow we've found during that time. I suppose that comes from growing up in a place that gets snow only once or twice a year.

There isn't much to do in the meadows other than walk through the meadows, and it was a bit soggy and cold to do so with no chance of seeing any flowers, so we turned to head home after snow play.

We tried to visit the Hetch Hetchy area on the way back, but we were too late. The reservoir there supplies San Francisco's drinking water (no, it's not close to San Francisco; California's water usage is odd, to say the least), so it's governed differently than the rest of the park. Namely, it closes early.

Oh, well. We were all tired anyway. But it wasn't a total bust. Being back down at a lower elevation, we did get to see some wildflowers in bloom!

Lupine in bloom