Sunday, February 26, 2006

February Yosemite, Part II

Yep, I'm just lucky to live near enough to Yosemite to go there TWICE this month. I went there with my brother Dave and his wife, his daughter and her hubby but, it was not without some trouble along the way. We met up in Groveland and had a great burger at the Irondoor Saloon, the oldest bar in California, established before 1852. We continued on up the highway to the Yosemite Gatehouse Lodge and found that no one was anywhere to be found. Since we couldn't check in and nobody would answer the phone, we did some investigating on our own and found that the rooms we wanted were messy and not at all ready. In fact, we decided we didn't want to stay there ever again.....lol.
Sooooooooooo, we got back on the road and headed for Yosemite Valley. Luckily, we were able to get a couple of rooms for Thursday night with no promises for Friday night. Below is a picture of the view from this $178 per night room. Dave's room pretty much had a view of a construction yard, though.


The next morning, we were successful in keeping our rooms for another night. That freed us up to go for a hike of my choosing, and the Yosemite Falls trail was conveniently right there, beckoning us ascend to views unlike any in the world. The below picture shows our destination on the tip of that wooded point on the left side of the photo.


Now, I had been up there before and so had Dave. I was hoping that my niece's hubby, Ryan, would be able to tolerate the strenuous climb. It turned out that the trail was quite a bit steeper than we could remember. On the way up, we ran across some wildlife that were obviously well-adjusted to human presence. This one deer in the picture below was happily grazing only 8 feet away from us, only caring about the noises coming from the unseen hikers. Sixty switchbacks and at least 600 vertical feet up, we finally crested the worst of the trail, hearing rock and ice falling from the cliffs above at regular intervals. After that, the trail eases into traversing a fairly wide ledge under the trees for a half mile to the first glimpse of the Upper Yosemite Falls. I certainly wasn't disappointed and took tons of pictures and several digital videos of the falls.



Deciding not to play with my wide angle lens, I took advantage of the powerful zoom to get in VERY close to the falls and get some wonderful "abstracts" of the "snowfalls". When it gets cold enough in Yosemite, the waterfalls turn into very large snowmaking machines. Much of the falling water does turn into snow before it hits the ground. The ever-changing swirls and surges just captivates and mesmerizes you. I have several pics like the one below that I really think could sell as fine art pieces.


I'll post some more, along with the great shot of a bobcat that my brother took (and that I missed....I didn't get even a single shot because my memory card was full.)

Enjoy!

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