Yosemite Again! 08/26/06

So after not going to Yosemite at all for about 5 or 6 years, I am making up for it now! This was my fourth trip since last November. It has been interesting to see the change of scenery each visit has brought. I am looking forward to visiting the park when there is snow!

This trip had been planned for quite awhile. My June trip inspired some co-workers of mine to visit and I, of course, offered to take them on my day trip tour. Miraculously I talked everyone in to getting up at 3:30am for this trip (I must have some amazing powers of persuasion or something :-p ) . I ended up waking up at 3am for some reason so that was when my day started. I made two stops to pick people up and we were off to the mountains.

The first official stop was at Scotty's Doughnuts in Oakdale. The earlier you get there the warmer the doughnuts are and let me tell you they taste GOOD! We were not there that early this time though, but that is okay, the maple bars I had were still tasty. We piled back in the car and continued on. The next stop we made was at the Rim of the World vista point. There was a forest fire burning a couple of ridges over so all day we were seeing helicopters with their buckets dropping water on the fire. After the vista point we were in the park! We stopped at my usual Hwy 120 stops (Big Meadow overlook, the Half Dome overlook, the Cascades bridge). There wasn't much water so a lot of my waterfall stops I skipped this time. We continued on to Bridalveil Falls which was a ghost of its former spring self. It was nice not to get wet at the overlook this time though, usually you can't go there without an umbrella or rain poncho. We looked at El Capitan and the Three Brothers, made a quick stop at Sentinel Beach (we tried to outrun the mosquitoes but failed), and parked at Curry Village.

We had quite a sight when we got to Curry Village... A buck was in the parking lot munching on apples that had fallen from the trees in the apple orchard that is the parking lot. He did not care one bit that people were around. After hanging out for a bit we headed out, our next destination being Lower Yosemite Falls. This waterfall also was a ghost of itself. It is a lovely walk though. We meandered our way to the base and back, stopping to pose for some pictures on a fallen log that I took pictures on in June. This time though it was all about the yoga poses! You have to have good balance to do those poses on a log! Once we were done with the area, we drove up to Glacier Point. This was the conclusion of the trip and in celebration we had ice cream on a stick!

It was a fun day and memories of my June trip were still vivid as I looked at the familiar landmarks around the Valley. I have always loved Half Dome but now that I have been most of the way up there I look at it in a different way - I love it even more now. After the long drive home, my day ended around 9:15pm. I skipped dinner and went right to bed!

Pictures in order:

Half Dome overlook from Hwy 120
Jennifer and I doing Yoga poses near Lower Yosemite Falls
Half Dome from Glacier Point