Trip America: Day 19 - Yosemite National (Amusement) Park (YNP 2 of 3)

Before I jump into day two of Yosemite I want to throw a little disclaimer out there...

YOSEMITE IS AWESOME. IT IS BREATHTAKING, HISTORIC, DRAMATIC, MEMORABLE, AND 100 PERCENT WORTH VISITING (TIME AND TIME AGAIN).

I feel this disclaimer is necessary because when reviewing this post, I noticed there were quite a few references to "paved trails" and "large crowds" and "cheesy commerce points". Yosemite has those things, yes, but it also has almost 70-square miles of unbelievable natural beauty. When you consider the size and scope of the natural beauty, the "bad parts" almost completely negligible.

July 1st.

Despite the "bear-scare" Lauren and I had the first night in the park, we woke up well rested and ready to take on the day. We cooked up a light breakfast, packed up the car, made sure that anything scented and left behind was locked securely in the bear locker, and we headed out.

Our campsite, Crane Flats, was situated just inside the western entrance and high above the valley floor. At around 6,000 feet of elevation, the drive from Crane Flats to the valley is about 30-minutes of gorgeous descent with each turn in the twisty road bringing a new beautiful view.

There were dozens of very necessary pull outs along the drive and Lauren and I utilized many of them. When we first spotted Half Dome we were both awestruck. We pulled the Subaru to the side of the road as quickly as could (safely) be done and jumped out of the car with our cameras in hand.

Although it was early in the day the small vista point was already a shit show. Dozens of cars, trucks and RVs tried to pull into and out of small spaces without taking their eyes off Half Dome (it's not going anywhere folks). People queued up for their turn for a selfie in front of the best photo op, and one hopelessly overwhelmed ranger regurgitated two or three pieces of information to the never ending parade of tourists.

After our obligatory pictures Lauren and I were back on the road. As we continued down the winding road the views only got better and better until we finally leveled off at the bottom of the valley. From there it was a short drive to Yosemite Village. We weren't really sure what Yosemite Village was, but all of the tourist information that we had gathered thus far indicated that it would be a good place to start.

Within a few minutes of talking to a ranger at the village it became apparent that if we wanted to see all of Yosemite in the next few days, we were going to fail miserably! As we pressed the ranger for information, and collected a few more maps I couldn't help but feel like Yosemite was a grand museum. As in any great museum you could spend hours, if not days, in each room, giving each piece it's fair attention. You could return again and again and never exhaust the beauty within... But if you were like us, and had limited time, you see some of the highlights, get a feel for the overall park, make plans to come back to see parts we couldn't see this time, and don't get too caught up on the fact that we'll miss out (for now) on the majority of the park.

By the time we stepped away from the information desk it was past mid-day and already scorching hot. We decided to start with some easy-to-mild hikes and save any harder hikes for the next day when, with a little planning, we could start early before it got too hot.

Yosemite has been receiving tourists for a very long time and has adapted well to handle the crowds. From Yosemite Village (basically, a handful of buildings useful to tourists) at the center of the valley you can hop on a free shuttle that does a loop around the valley floor. There are 22-stops along the way but as the road is one-way, it's actually more like 11-stops with two stops at each place (one shuttle heading one way, and the other on the other side of the road). They leave every 10-minutes all day long and--thankfully--are air conditioned.

We hopped on a shuttle at the village and in no time at all were getting dumped off with a handful of other tourists at the Mirror Lake trail head stop. The Mirror Lake trail was an easy (under 3-miles round trip) hike with little elevation gain that led to the beautiful and historic Mirror Lake. Short hike + little elevation gain + beautiful lake destination = lots and lots of people hiking! Lauren and I were both a little surprised that the hiking trail was paved. We were more surprised as we continued to walk when we found that it wasn't just the trail head that was paved, but rather the entire trail :(

Although we knew we weren't doing any ambitious hikes today, we still--in the excitement of Yosemite--laced up our hiking books, and prepared ourselves mentally for an epic outdoors journey. I felt more than a little silly in all my hiking gear walking on a paved road next to a couple pushing their twins in a double-wide stroller.

Yosemite, like most of the state of California this season, has experienced two weather trends this season; drought, and excessive heat. That's a bad combination for lots of reasons (vegetation, forest fires, etc.) but for our present purposes, the most obvious affect was low water levels. "Is this it?" we thought. While Mirror Lake was still a lake, it was barely a fraction of the body you'd see in a postcard.

I wonder why they call it Mirror Lake

With much difficulty we found a lunch spot where the few remaining falls drowned out the sound of tourists and families gayly frolicking in the water and we enjoyed our lunch with our toes in the water.

After hiking back down, we took the shuttle back to Yosemite village and walked the short distance to Lower Yosemite Falls. The Ansel Adams art gallery is between the two so we popped our head in to peruse some of the early "Yosemite marketing material".

Lower Yosemite Falls was teaming with visitors. The views were breathtaking but I was a bit disappointed that we still were unable to get off of paved paths. Once we had our fill of the falls we made our way back to the parking lot on foot and headed back towards Crane Flats.

A "nice" picture at Lower Yosemite Falls

And a "naughty" picture at Lower Yosemite Falls

With all of the reasons I have to brag about Crane Flats, one draw back was that the campground doesn't have any shower facilities. Even though we hadn't done any difficult hiking, temps in the valley were high and as we headed back to our campsite we couldn't help but think how nice it would be to freshen up a bit.

As we snaked our way alongside the Yosemite River we both quickly reached the same conclusion... it was time for a swim! We found a somewhat private spot along the river, ditched the car on the side of the river, stripped down to our skivvies, and waded into the cool fresh water. It was exactly what the doctor ordered and we felt great afterwards.

Boxers pass for a bathing suit right?

Back at Crane Flats we enjoyed some more hammock time, played some cribbage, and enjoyed a delicious dinner of mac n' cheese (with an avocado, cucumber, and carrot salad, you know, to class it up a bit).