Yosemite National Park

Saturday, July 14^th    Yosemite National Park

This morning we woke up at the Comfort Inn in Lone Pine, CA.   We packed up the car under Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the Continental US at 14,500 feet.   It was weird to be at both the lowest point in the US last night and now seeing the highest point this morning.  As we drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains, we enjoyed seeing some snow.  We were again rising in elevation and when we reached the entrance of Yosemite  National Park, we were at 9,945 feet (the highest point that we had hiked at yet).  The high temperature today was to be 67 degrees- WOW, a far cry from Death Valley! 

We stopped at the Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Center to see what hikes we would like to do.   At this point, they said there were still openings in some of the campgrounds but by the time we got to them, they were full.  So we will not sleep here tonight L 

Our first stop was at Olstead Point. It was huge slabs of granite rock that sloped down the mountain.  Oh, it was nice to get out and run around, the kids were like mountain goats and I did not even see them most of the time.  I think they would have been happy to stay here all day.   They were climbing on rocks, exploring in pine groves and the view was just magnificent…we could see the famous Half- Dome.

The smell of pine needles was invigorating and so fresh.   I LOVE this smell!  Oh, to be able to bottle up this smell and bring it home.

Our next stop was at the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoia Trees.  It was a 2.5 mile hike with a 500 foot elevation change.  The hike was very nice going down and I was dreading the hike going back up but the kids ended up kicking it out!  This hike had some huge trees- they are so incredible.  Several of the trees were over two thousand years old. It is amazing to think that these trees were here when Jesus walked on the earth.  So very cool! The giant sequoia trees are the oldest and the largest living things that we know of in the history of the world.

We also hiked through the Tunnel Tree.  This path used to be the one of the paths that cars would take coming into the park.  It was amazing with 2 pointy spires that reminded us of something from the Lord of the Rings.

Then we drove into Yosemite Valley (this is a BIG park!) and by the way, our car crossed 200,000 miles while driving here and it is doing great (but will never be the same again J).

The tunnel tree

We stopped at Bridal Veil Falls and it is so gorgeous to see water streaming off the top of these huge cliffs.  There was a huge rainbow coming out of the Falls.  We went up the path, over the fence and scrambled up the rocks toward the bottom of the Falls.  The boys all scampered quickly up the rocks but Annika and I followed more slowly.  The rocks were huge and slick from years of water pouring over them (the water was low now so it was not covering these rocks) and people walking on them.  We could see the boys at different points before they made it to the pool under the Falls.   The pool there was just deep enough to swim in.   I was fortunate that the boys did not come back soaked from this adventure.

This beautiful mountain to the left is the famous Half-Dome that rock climbers love to climb.



By the pool of Lower Yosemite Falls



Annika climbed the
whole way herself!

After safely climbing down, we headed toward the last hike we wanted to do…Lower Yosemite Falls.  It was a beautiful  hike up to another falls.  Of course, when we got there, everyone started scrambling up the rock bed again.  Annika, determined to not miss the waterfall again, started out herself.  These rocks were less slippery so we slowly and steadily made our way up, up and up.  We saw the boys ahead of us and could get glimpses of them near the waterfall.  There were some big boulders to climb and Annika did a great job navigating our course.  We were very proud of ourselves when we reached the pool under the falls- it was so pretty with all the spray flying everywhere.  There were actually climbers climbing down next to the falls- daring!   As we looked around for the boys, we didn’t see them.   I finally spotted them all the way back down on the trail.  WHAT??  Annika climbed the whole way up and they left us????  Well, they spotted us (good thing for bright shirts) so we waved them back up so we could get pictures.  They scrambled up quicker than us.  We got some fun family pictures and headed down as we were starting to lose our light.  Jonathan and Christopher WERE more soaked from this waterfall.  :) Note:  this is the first place we have really seen mosquitoes and had to use bug spray.  Annika was attacked by mosquitoes and got two doozy bites on her forehead. 

We started looking for a place to eat as we have not really had much food since breakfast.  We decided to eat at the Mountain Room in the Yosemite Lodge. It was a beautiful room and we had a great meal (even if it was 9:30pm)  We headed out of  the park and drove about an hour where we found a Holiday Inn Express in Merced, Ca. about 12:30am (Dave is thankful for the Priority Club points he racked up at work – only 10,000 for this hotel).  The kids are doing AMAZING with these long days and helping getting things out of the car to sleep.  We love being on the trip but it will be nice to just be able to crawl into bed at night when we get home.  We are so thankful we got to see this amazing park- so much beauty!