Driving into Yosemite is quite the treat. First we missed the turn off which is quite a feat since it is Yosemite national park after all. Jen and I would like to take little to no responsibility for this as the signs around those parts are both misleading and very small. Shame on you California. Schwarzenegger should get on fixing that. Missing the exit was only half the fun as getting into the park is quite another battle. We arrived at the gate and bought our national park pass to grant us free entrances for the rest of our trip, and year for that matter.
If you didn't know before, Yosemite lies in a valley, or at least all of the main attractions do. To get to the valley you must climb ridiculous mountains to get down inside. Those curvy climbs are where we learned how to drive a 1985 300TD Mercedes wagon up mountainous hills. Previous to owning old diesels, we had only driven fairly new gas engine cars with decent horsepower and pickup, thus not needing to worry about hills and such. This old diesel engine auto though, with its slow off the line start, needed a little help. So we learned to use the lower gears on our automatic and waalah, the car now drove up mountains like it was a billy goat in its previous life. After our climb to the clouds, we finally turned around some bends and out of nowhere flashes the beauty that is Yosemite National Park.
Even from high up on the hilltop highway, it looked grand. The valley was tempting, but since we had gotten a little off track finding the turnoff we needed to find a place to sleep first. There are about four or five first come first serve campgrounds in and around the park. We figured that the ones in the valley were off limits so we went to the first one closest to, but still outside the valley, and struck gold. Well maybe silver, since there were some nicer spots that we thought were spoken for, but people hadn't taken down there little paper marker at the site.
The campground was called Tamarack Flat. We grabbed the first open site we could find and set up camp. The site we took over had little to no flat ground to set the tent upon so we slept on a slight downhill despite my trying to level it out. It was a bigger task than I was ready for. After eating and everything else was said and done it was too late to check out the valley so we decided to call it an early night and start fresh the next day.
We had planned out what we wanted to do the night prior, so that we could attack Yosemite with all our might. It turns out that Yosemite packs a decent punch much like his counterpart, Sam, except without the guns. We drove the 10 or so miles to the valley and my-oh-my, was it gorgeous.
Everything in the valley is like something you are familiar with, via pictures or other places and objects that you've seen, but in Yosemite it is on a much bigger scale. It's like when the national parks were being doled out, Yosemite said, "oh yeah, that's a nice tree you got there, but check out mine, it's three times the size of yours." Waterfalls are much grander and granite mountain faces are spectacularly more beautiful than any counter top you could imagine.
Yosemite's valley is actually quite small, which is cool because everything is easy to get to. It has its downfall though, but we'll get to that later. Since the valley is not so big we drove around for a bit and saw most of the sites from the driving loop that goes around the park. From there, we decided we would do the Yosemite falls trail to the midpoint that was about a mile long.
Hiking is another place where Yosemite likes to show up other national parks. This one mile trail also climbs over a thousand feet and is comprised of, by my estimate, about a thousand twenty foot long switchbacks. A switchback is a stretch of steep trail that literally just zig zags up the mountain. This went on for what seemed to be an eternity. We started strong and wanted to give up many a times, but we powered through the longest mile in our lives. Just when we thought we had reached the end, we just turned a mountain and started all over again. I could have sworn we took a wrong turn somewhere, because at this point we had climbed straight up for about an hour or so. There was still no end in sight. We kept telling each other there's no turning back. Finally someone ahead of us exclaimed,"We can finally see the waterfall!" This gave us that extra boost that we desperately needed.
As we turned the final corner, the wait was almost built up too much as it felt like I walked across all of California to get there, but thankfully it wasn't. Yosemite falls was within grasp and at that moment the sweat and tears were non-existent, for the pure and simple site of water flowing off a mountain top and crashing down many feet below was enough to wipe anybody's worries away.
I'm not sure exactly how long it took us to hike up the trail, but going down was a wee bit faster. I think we cut our time in about a fifth, as we hauled ass going downhill. We moved so quickly that Jen's calves started to quiver. It was much easier to go down than up. The only difficulty that came into play was the slippery rock/stairs that slanted downwards making it necessary to plant your feet correctly, lest you want to go tumbling down. We made it through all the steps unscathed. For it wasn't until we were almost at the finish line, in a stretch of wooded dirt path that Jen hit a rough patch and fell to the ground. I heard a thump, and then some laughter. Luckily it was her's and not mine. Yet.
After seeing her laugh, I figured I could join and it wouldn't be rude. This put a good stamp on the finish of our hiking for the day. We caught the valley tram and looked around at all the sites we had missed along the way. Exhausted from hiking in the sun all day, we decided to call it a day.
Remember that downfall of being a small park? Well, it consists of everyone trying to leave at the same time. The traffic getting out of the valley was pretty bad. The loop around is mostly one way streets until you reach certain areas close to the entrance that allow for two way traffic. The back up consisted mainly of park rangers directing traffic for a good forty five minutes. After sitting through the traffic jam of Yoseminites, we made it back to camp to slope sleep our hike off of us.
Jen and I woke up the next day with a surprising spring in our step. We ate some breakfast and cruised up the highway to the east exit. On the way out we crossed a nice little lake by the name of Tenaya. This was a great time for us to break out our blow up kayak. We took the pump out, hooked it up, and started our adventure.
I had made some sandwiches earlier so we packed a little lunch and set off into the water. We paddled out into the middle of the lake and proceeded to find a beach area across the way to eat lunch. When we finally made it across, we sat down to eat. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes decided to feast as well. They swarmed us out of nowhere. We were under attack and in fight or flight mode, so we swiftly grabbed our gear and pushed off the beach. We ate our lunch as we floated in the middle of the lake. It turned out to be better than sitting on the beach anyway. Thanks mosquitoes.
The lake was about a mile wide or so, and we probably paddled around at least a mile there and back, which was some good exercise. This completed our fun in Yosemite, as we headed towards our ascent to the highest elevation traveled so far on our journey. We passed the Tioga summit, which totaled 9,945 feet in elevation. The car handled fine. This concluded our Yosemite stop, which was well worth it. The scenery was amazing. Next time we will spend some more time and try to stay in the valley so it's easier to get around and see everything.
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