Lauren's Blog: Crazy Road Trip Summer 2011: Day 5

Our first full day in Yosemite was the first day that Bill had seen Yosemite in the light. I was really excited about this since he is so into photography and had been talking about going to Yosemite ever since we'd met. We drove to Glacier Point first, a place I'd never been either. It was so beautiful! The crazy thing was that we were driving next to at least a foot of snow almost the whole way up. That explained why the water was so high! At Glacier Point, you can see many of the attractions on the valley floor: Yosemite Falls, Mirror Lake, the Ahwahnee Hotel, Vernal and Nevada Falls, and the Merced River. You also have an exquisite view of Half Dome and the peaks behind Half Dome.

Nevada Falls

Half Dome with Nevada Falls

Half Dome with Nevada and Vernal Falls

Action Shot!

Yosemite Falls with the famous rock from the photo below (I think...the pic was taken in 1900 at Glacier Point. Hard to know with erosion)

Mirror Lake next to half dome. If you look in the middle of the picture you can see the big, white landslide area. This landslide happened a couple years ago, and another minor one happened the day after I took this picture!

Bill :)

Notice the camo backpack Lol

Nice view, but a little scary!

On our drive back down, we stopped and ate sandwiches in the snow. Some deer decided to dine with us as well :)

Once we drove down to the valley floor, we began to tackle the serious summer Yosemite crowds. Finding a parking spot was absolutely crazy! We parked in the general visitors parking area after looking around for a good 20 minutes and went and bought some groovy hiking hats (see below :) ). Then we took the shuttle down to the Vernal/Nevada Falls hiking trail and I got to try out my new Vibrams.

My Vibram Trekkers :)

A long exposure water shot that Bill took of the river near Vernal Falls.

A more placid section of the Merced River (or so it seems...).

The water was really rough!

A waterfall coming from another corner of the canyon.

The view of Vernal Falls from the bridge over the river.

The view from the opposite side of the bridge.

Vernal Falls

The squirrels were pretty aggressive. They reminded me of some of the ones I've seen at the Grand Canyon.

I believe the phrase that went with this picture was: "You are not taking a picture of me with this hat on..."

And it's silly faces time...

A deer by the beginning of the trail.

The river was running over its banks so much that it was swallowing trees!

After our hike up to Vernal Falls, we decided to walk over to Mirror Lake. Our legs were pretty tired at this point since the walk to Vernal Falls is almost entirely up hill. I've also found that the Vibrams work your calves harder than normal shoes, so my out of shape calves were killing me! We powered up the trail to Mirror Lake and didn't realize until halfway through that we were actually going up the horse trail. It was full of horse "puckey" and quite a bit of muddy ground from horse hooves. That made for an interesting hike. We weren't able to go the entire way up the trail because part of it was closed off from previous land slides. Mirror lake also looks different than I remembered it. It was flooded over because of the high water flow. It was also less glassy because they are starting to let the lake fill in with silt and follow the natural process of creating a meadow.

Half Dome from the side on the way to the Mirror Lake trail.

A wildflower along the road.

The hike up to Mirror Lake.

Mirror Lake

By the time Bill and I got back from Mirror Lake and took the shuttle back to our car, it was nightfall. At that point, it was time to take Moonbow pictures again :) . First we went a little ways up the Lower Yosemite Falls trail, then we stopped at a meadow area that had a great view of the falls.