“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”
― Ansel Adams
This photo above is the "Valley View" photo of Yosemite National Park ... one of which made Ansel Adams a very famous landscape photographer. Since his photos were mainly black and white, I decided to do one myself from this image above. Yosemite was beautiful and there were lots of fall colors near the valley floor. We had three nights there and tried to make the most of each day! Here are the beginning photos as we left Nevada and crossed into California to meet Michelle and Nestor in the National Park...
We were coming into Yosemite from the east side of the park and there is only one road available ... the Tioga Pass. This road is only open seasonally and closes when the snow starts to fall, which is typically mid-November. Tioga Pass (Hwy 120) is the highest highway pass in California and in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The road reaches an elevation of 9,943 ft. and although it is under 80 miles from the entrance to Yosemite Valley, it takes at LEAST two hours (closer to three) to make the journey through the winding mountain road. It's very pretty, for sure, but about halfway through, we were more than ready to get to our destination! LOL! We didn't take time to stop along the road and take photos (I just did that from the passenger seat) because we really wanted to get to the campsite and get setup before sunset.
In the weeks before the trip, I had watched several YouTube videos on Yosemite, so I had a general idea of what I wanted to see while we were there. I had also heard that it was super important to book campsite reservations well in advance. Unfortunately even a few weeks before was almost too late. We could only get reservations for one night. Everything else was booked. On the bright side though, we planned on staying that one night in the Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley, and then getting up early the next morning in hopes of securing spots in the "first come, first served" campgrounds elsewhere in the valley. But, by the time Jim and I arrived, that plan had changed yet again!
Michelle and Nestor got to the campground first and were already setup when we arrived to our spot across from them. While there, Michelle said another camper had stopped by their site to check out her camper, which is an Airstream Bambi. Apparently, the Airstream people are as tight and dedicated as people who are loyal to the Apple iproducts. Ha Ha! This regular camper, Kristin, had her Airstream a few rows over and had actually reserved 8 campsites for her friends to arrive as well. They do this every year in Yosemite apparently. However this year she had a few extra campsites that weren't going to be used, but were pre-paid. So it certainly worked in our favor!! We were able to purchase two of the sites directly from her, which were for three nights each (our original plans anyway), AND were right next to each other. It was more than perfect!! Thanks, Kristin!!
Michelle's camper is to the left and ours was right next door! We parked so that our camper doors faced each other and we hung out near the fire pit back between our sites. We were also very close to the campground bathrooms, which are just out of the photo to the right. Bummer though that they didn't have showers there. There was only one location open for showers in the whole Yosemite Valley and we had to drive to get there. But since Michelle's camper is towed behind their vehicle, we were able to take their Lexus out for sightseeing.
The campsite itself was great, but there were a few things that made it a bit difficult too. Of course, no local showers was #1 on the list, especially since we didn't have running water in the RV due to the water pipes leaking after the snow storm in Cheyenne. Also, there wasn't any electric hookups at camp either. That was odd, because typically you have electric and water at a nice paid campground such as this. But no, neither was available at the sites. We did have the generators in our campers, but you were only allowed to run them at certain times of the day ... three times (morning, noon, and night) for a two-hour limit, and they didn't want you to run it the entire two hours either! So we'd turn it on to use the coffee maker, or the microwave, or to charge up the RV battery just a bit so that the interior lights would work at night. The solar panel on top of the RV wasn't very effective either since there were SO many trees around us and the sun barely touched the ground. That was weird too because it'd be 2 p.m. and look/feel like it was 6 p.m.! Never enough sunlight down there in the campground. One night, we were sleeping and heard this beeping alarm about 3 a.m. It was one of our RV system alarms and was beeping every 15 to 30 seconds to let us know that the battery was running too low. It beeped like that from 3 a.m. until 7 a.m. when we were allowed to turn the generator on and charge things up!! THAT was a long night for sure! Ha Ha!!
But it was fun camping together — the four of us! We cooked our meals together, enjoyed the campfire at night, played horseshoes and a card game, went on hikes, and toured some of the Yosemite valley by vehicle. Although we were warned over and over about bears, we didn't see any. But we did see a wild coyote in the camp a couple of times.
Our first full day at camp was on Friday, October 26. We decided we'd go for a hike that day and tour around the valley. Yosemite Falls is one of North America's tallest waterfalls at 2,425 feet high. This time of year the waterfalls in Yosemite are mostly dried up. Apparently they are extremely full and active in the early spring when the snow starts to melt. So although we were hiking to see the Lower Yosemite Falls, there was no water flowing. See that green mossy part on the mountain behind and to the right of us? That's where water should be tumbling down the cliff! Ha Ha!! But the weather was fantastic and it was still a very pretty walk.
The next day (Saturday) was just about a full day adventure. From the Valley floor in Yosemite, it's an hours drive to most any of the other sites in the National Park. So my top choices were either to visit the sequoia trees or Glacier Point for the mountain views. I figured I had lots of opportunity to photograph the mountains, and I really wanted to see the sequoia trees, so we headed south to Mariposa Grove. Mariposa Grove is the most popular sequoia grove in the park and was just reopened this past June after a three-year restoration project. They have about 500 mature sequoias in the park! With a height of 286 feet or more, a circumference of 113 feet or more, an estimated bole volume of up to 52,500 cubic feet, and an estimated life span of 1800–2700 years, the giant sequoia is among the tallest, widest and longest-lived of all organisms on Earth.
In 1864 President Lincoln signed legislation protecting the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley for "public use, resort, and recreation." This landmark legislation holds an important place in our country's history and was enacted at a time when the nation was embroiled in the Civil War. For the first time in our nation's history, the federal government set aside scenic natural areas to be protected for the benefit of future generations. Yosemite officially became a National Park in 1890. Later added to Yosemite National Park in 1906, the Mariposa Grove is a popular destination within the park.
We decided we'd do the two-mile Grizzly Giant Loop Trail. It was a wide, easy path, with most of it being dirt (which I much prefer rather than pavement). The Grizzly Giant tree (pictured with the four of us below) is one of the top 30 largest giant sequoia trees in the world! It's really hard to show the scale of these trees through photography.... but believe me, they are huge!!
This is the California Tunnel Tree (above) and vehicles used to drive through it! It was carved in 1895 and the bark of the tree now grows inward in an attempt to close over its wound. Before this one, there was a tunnel in the Wawona Tunnel Tree, but it fell in 1969 after serving for over 75 years. Both trees were helpful in publicizing the Mariposa Grove in the early years of Yosemite.
Leaving Mariposa Grove, we drove the hour back towards our campground in the valley, and stopped along the way at Ansel Adams' Valley View photo spot for some quick photos. (It's just on the other side of the tunnel below.) It was SO crowded with people from the bus tours, but that didn't stop us from grabbing our photos too!
And Sunday morning, October 28, we were up bright and early for the long three-hour drive east (by way of the Tioga Pass again) to Hwy. 395 so that we could camp along that route before heading south to Death Valley.... our next big destination!
