May 3, 2008 - Yosemite National Park

Mike and I have been busy since I last updated the blog. We left Paso Robles on April 30 and made our way up to Groveland, CA which is about 22 miles from the entrance into Yosemite National Park.

Our trip took us through Fresno and the San Joaquin valley. This valley is huge and there are miles and miles and miles of farms growing all sorts of fruits and vegetables. I need to check out to see what percentage of the nations fruits and veggies are grown in this valley. It has to be a very high percentage. The valley is dry and the crops have to be irrigated. It has to have been a real challenge for the farmers in this area to figure out how to get water to this huge area, but they have done it. All of us benefit from their efforts. CA produce is in markets all over this country.

We continued on up the valley and eventually turned toward the east and made our way toward the Sierra Nevada mountain range. We had a five mile climb that was pretty scary. The road up the mountains was narrow and curvy and there are very few trees so you can see how high up you are. I don't like heights, so the drive up made me very uneasy. I did not realize that I was leaning over toward Mike. He asked me if I thought by leaning his way, I was going to keep us from going off the side. Let's just say that I was very happy when we got to the top.

The next morning, we got up and headed out to see Yosemite. I am not even going to try to describe Yosemite to you. It is beyond my ability to describe. I think it is the most beautiful place we have been so far. The majesty of the sheer granite cliffs and the magnificent waterfalls and the lush green meadows and the rushing streams is more than words can convey. We took over 600 pictures in two days. That should tell you how very impressed Mike and I were with Yosemite.

Our information on Yosemite says that is covers a space about the size of Rhode Island. The place most often seen in brochures is a very small piece of the park. This is the Yosemite Valley. Our first day was spent entirely in the valley. Before we got to the valley floor, we made several stops to view the valley below and a waterfall. Our first stop in the valley was Bridalveil Falls. The trail up to these falls takes you close enough to get wet from the mist. I only stood there a minute and my hair was very wet.

After leaving Bridalveil Falls, we continued to drive up the valley and gawk at the granite cliffs surrounding us. We made a stop at the Ahwahnee Hotel which was built in the early 1900's and has several fireplaces that are large enough to stand in. We walked around the hotel and looked at the memorabilia. Mike bought me a beautiful vase from the hotel gift shop made from Banded Onyx from Pakistan. It is beautiful.

After leaving the hotel, we decided to take a trail to Mirror Lake. The sign said it was 1.8 miles. I thought, no problem. I can do that easy. Well, what they did not say is that 1.5 miles was uphill. To make matters worst is this is the trail the horses take to Mirror Lake and they left a lot of presents behind for those of us walking. It appears that they needed to lighten the load as they went up some of the narrow parts of the path. It was hard enough to get up these narrow sections without having to watch where you put down your feet. In addition, I had Toby on a leash and was trying to keep him from getting in the horse droppings. Needless to say, I was happy when we finally got to the lake. It is a beautiful spot. I was surprised to see people coming up a walk toward us when we got to the lake. I asked someone about the walk and found out that we took the hard path to the lake. We could have walked up the road or followed the bike path and it would have been a lot easier than the path we took. But, we would have missed dodging the horse gifts. We did take the road back!!!

As we were leaving the park, we pulled over to take some pictures of El Capitan. This is the rock face that is very popular with rock climbers. We walked down a path to the river and there was a couple there and they told us they were watching some climbers. I looked over to the cliff and did not see anyone. The man told me where to look and I was shocked - the climbers looked about the size of ants on the rock face. They were about 1/3 of the way up the face. We got our binoculars out and looked at the climbers for a bit before leaving. We decided that we would check in the next day to check on their progress. I just can't believe that anyone with any sense would hang up a hammock on a sheer rock face and lay down on it and sleep, but they do.

On Friday, we went back into the valley and got some great pictures of the Half Dome and checked on the climbers. They had made considerable progress but were still a long way from the top. Then we made our way to the other side of the park to see the sequoia trees in Mariposa Grove. It took us about an hour or so to drive to the other side of Yosemite. The trees were worth the drive. The are huge and there are quite a few of them in this grove. We got a lot of pictures. It is just hard to believe that some of them are over 2000 years old.

After visiting Mariposa Grove, we took another route out of the park and back to our campground. This drive took us on a very curvy road way up high on the ridges. I don't know why they had to make the road so high up. I was wiped out from clinging to the armrest by the time we got back to Groveland.

Today, we left Yosemite and traveled over to Oakland, CA and across the San Francisco bay on I-580. We did not go over the Bay Bridge which takes you into San Francisco. The bridge we took was north of downtown San Francisco. We have been over the Bay Bridge before so we were not disappointed that our route did not take us across this particular bridge. We got on US101 just across the bay and traveled on this highway all the way up CA to our destination. I said in a post when we were in Paso Robles that I thought the vineyards there were as large as those in Napa Valley, but I was wrong. Mike and I had driven in the Napa Valley twice before this trip, but we found out today that we only saw the tip of the iceberg on our other trips. The valley is much longer than we previously thought.

The farther north we drove, the bigger the trees became and the greener the landscape became. I guess we are now in what is the southern tip of the Pacific Northwest. Our destination is a little bitty town called Redcrest which is about 40 miles south of Eureka, CA in the redwood forest area. We are going to be here a couple of days checking out these huge trees.

Well, I need to sign off for now. It is almost midnight here. Enjoy the pictures of Yosemite.