Yosemite National Park

Saturday, July 11, 2015
Our travels took us to Yosemite National Park via the south entrance today.  Our campground is about an hour from the entrance and at about 2000 feet elevation.  Our drive took us through a couple of small towns and then the road narrowed as we began to climb to over 5000 feet in elevation on twisting turning roads on our way to the first point of special interest to us -- Glacier Point.  Here you can see the canyons, peeks and valleys and a few of the waterfalls carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago.  What a glorious sight!!!

Right behind us is a huge rock called Half Dome (8836 ft tall) which looks like half of the rock was sliced right off.  It is hard to see but to the right of it in the distance is snow.  We think that might be some of the snow that fell in the Tioga Pass area near the East Entrance a couple of days ago and caused that road to be closed.  Hard to believe snow fell in July in California where it has been so hot but then you can see we have jackets on because it was still cool though we soon were taking them off as the sun warmed us up.

We spent quite a bit of time in this area simply soaking up the beauty and looking at the gorgeous views from several different vantage points.

It is difficult to see in this picture but in the center area there are two waterfalls - Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls.  The Nevada Falls have a drop of over 500 feet! and Vernal Falls drop over 300 feet

My zoom lens helped me single Nevada Falls out a bit.  It was our hope to go down to the Yosemite Valley area today and get much closer but the huge number of visitors and cars made it impossible to get there. The rangers were busy directing traffic away from the area.  So we'll try again on another day.

And this is Vernal Falls

This zoomed out picture shows the two sets of falls plus the depth of the canyon.

I zoomed in on the area with the snow in this picture.  We could see it much better with our binoculars.

This was taken of the area to the left of the Half Dome including some of the valley below.  Near the center of the photo in the distance you can see Yosemite Falls that has a drop of close to 2500 feet.  

By zooming in I could better get a picture of the Upper Yosemite Falls and the Lower Falls

Looking down you can see the Merced River winding like a snake through the trees and off to the far right is Yosemite Village which we could not get to today due to the huge number of visitors.

From this viewing spot we could better see the deep valley carved out by the glaciers.

From this viewing point we could see the Nevada and Vernal Falls even better and enjoy a beautiful rock bench at the same time as Frank and Bette are doing

In another spot I could look out and see this more open area

And these falls though I couldn't find any signs telling the name of them

It was hard to tear ourselves away from all this beauty but we finally ducked into a little shop and got a sandwich and then headed back for the main road in the park.  Along the way we stopped to check out this vista

We headed for the Yosemite Village in the Valley so we could go to the Visitor Center and on the way went through a long tunnel and came out to see this beautiful view.  Half Dome is now far in the distance center right and on the left is El Capitan which stands 7,569 feet tall.  It is quite imposing.

We again spent a fair amount of time simply soaking in all the views in this area. To the right of this picture you can kind of make out Bridal Veil Falls

As we watched it, it would suddenly stop flowing and then start again.  It was fascinating to watch as we made funny projections on why that would be. So of course, our next visit was to those falls.  To do that you need to walk a distance on a path next too lots of pieces of rock.  In the spring as the snows melt (but there was very little this year) this section becomes a raging river of water.  Now there is nothing.  A little stone bridge allows walkers to go over it.

And this was a picture I took when we got closer to the falls which we discovered stopped and started according to the blowing wind.  There is so little water going over the falls that the wind can actually lift up the water and blow it sideways so that nothing seems to be coming down and then when it quits blowing the water rolls over  the edge 

While walking to the falls, we passed a tree with two of these lovely birds in it - Steller Jays

Huge crowds kept us from seeing anything else today but we've still got several more so we will be returning.  But I think we'll wait till Monday and hope it is a little better then.