Yosemite

Let me get this out of the way right away: We were disappointed in Yosemite National Park.

There, I said it. Or wrote it, I guess. Nothing like ripping off the Band-Aid to start a blog post.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about Yosemite, shall we? First of all (and I realize this may contradict my opening statement a bit), I'm not saying Yosemite was disappointing. Just that it didn't measure up to everything we hoped it would be. The place is gorgeous and we had some incredible experiences in the Park (I'll get to those), but to put it quite succinctly, we've had better in National Parks elsewhere. And I think I expected too much.

Go with me here a bit.

When I think of the greatest National Parks in the United States, two names instantly pop into my head: Yellowstone and Yosemite. Maybe some people would think of the Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain or Glacier or some other place based on some amazing experience they have had in a particular park or whatever. But for me, it is (or was, I guess) Yellowstone and Yosemite. Those for me are supposed to be the creme de la creme, the alpha dogs, the cat's meow, just pick whatever saying you use for the best. It's those two. I've been to Yellowstone National Park twice. I had one of the best vacations ever in Yellowstone. I love the place. I figured Yosemite would be on par with Yellowstone. That's maybe unfair to Yosemite.

I suppose one of the reasons I considered those two parks to be the best before this year's Yosemite visit is because they were the first two. Yosemite was the first place to be set aside for public use and protection from development when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant in 1864. Yellowstone became the first United States National Park when the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872.

But they are not the same. Or at the same level.

Our first view of El Capitan. The smoke is from a controlled fire.

Let me spend a couple more paragraphs on Yellowstone vs. Yosemite. I'm not trying to bash Yosemite here. I'm really just trying to explain my biases. Really. Different people like different things. I think it's important to explain my point of view, because your own point of view may be totally different from mine, and you might think Yosemite blows away Yellowstone. And if you think that way, I think that's just fine.

If I were to boil the two parks down to their most basic components, I see Yosemite as granite cliffs, waterfalls and meadows and I see Yellowstone as tons of wildlife, varied landscapes and geothermal features. In a battle between those two things, I'm Yellowstone all the way. I spent the better part of four days in Yellowstone in the fall of 2020 and could have done twice that much time there. 

Now, I also believe I needed more time in Yosemite this year and I'd give it a second shot under different circumstances. But I'd still go back to Yellowstone first despite having spent a lot more time there already.

Vernal Fall.

So why was Yosemite not all I imagined it would be? Well, I'll tell you and then we can get onto what we loved about this Park. All this negativity (and it's not really that, honest) is getting old already. Let's get to what we loved after this next section. 

So first of all, there were parts of Yosemite that were closed due to damage caused by winter storms and the ensuing snowmelt doing things like washing away roads. Tioga Road, which runs the entire width of the Park north of Yosemite Valley, was closed in its entirety. We had a notion to go all the way to Tolumne Meadows if we had time and if not, then maybe as far as Olmsted Point. Neither of those options was available and honestly, we probably wouldn't have had time anyway considering the couple of days we budgeted in and around the Park. But we did want to go up to Glacier Point and take in the view of the entire Valley from above and maybe, take a hike up there. But no dice. Also shut down completely. That was for sure a disappointment.

Secondly, there were too many people there. I know, we picked like the week or maybe two weeks after most school systems in the entire United States are done with classes to take a trip out to Yosemite and therefore probably set ourselves up for this spectacularly, but it was honestly packed. Too many cars and people everywhere. I believe here that the parts of the Park that were closed potentially made the too many people issue even worse. I have no evidence to support that statement, but it stands to reason that if more parts of the Park were open, maybe some of the crowds would be out at the other areas rather than in the Valley. I might be wrong here, but it makes sense to me.

Thirdly...no bears. Yes, there are bears in Yosemite. No, we didn't see any. For this trip, that was OK. We saw plenty in Sequoia.

And finally, the Park is bigger than we thought it would be and we didn't allocate enough time. Now, is this Yosemite's fault? Absolutely not. But it factored into our experience. Yosemite Valley is BIG. It's also heavily wooded. And it's difficult to comprehend exactly what it is we were supposed to be looking at. Look, ultimately, there are a lot of gorgeous views in Yosemite National Park. Is that a bad thing? For sure...no. But it might affect one's appreciation on the first visit. I believe it did for us. The size of the place was a surprise to me.

Granite cliffs and a waterfall (it might be Yosemite Fall) (top). Steller's Jay (bottom).

So what did Yosemite have going for it? Well, quite honestly, it had a lot going for it.

First of all, the granite cliffs, waterfalls and meadows that I distilled the Park down to earlier in this post are just absolutely (and I know I already used this word a lot in this post already...) gorgeous and there are a lot of them. And I do mean a LOT. And more is for sure definitely better here. Every view from the valley floor that wasn't obscured by trees was just amazing. The grey cliffs in the sunlight providing a backdrop to lush verdant swathes of grass were everywhere and were impressive every time we laid eyes on them, whether it was from the car, on a hike or just walking from the main village over to the historic Ahwahnee Hotel that is the jewel of the all the Park's lodging properties. 

There are several iconic granite peaks in Yosemite and we got some signature looks at both Half Dome at the east end of the Valley and El Capitan towards the center. It was admittedly difficult for us to make out Sentinel Dome or any of the other peaks scattered around the perimeter, although I wouldn't be surprised if someone more knowledgeable than me about the Park were to look through our photographs and point some of them out. Heck, there might even be some of those in this post. But the only two we could confidently I.D. were Half Dome and El Capitan.

I have to say that we did wonder if Yosemite Valley would be remarkably different from the terrain we drove through to actually get to the Park. I had read stories of this valley being obviously worthy of preservation for everyone in a number of sources and was curious to see if we could notice any difference when we got there. We did. This place is clearly more spectacular than any of the other canyons and valleys and gulleys and whatever that we traversed on our two round-trip drives to Yosemite from Mariposa, where we stayed for two nights so we could get to and from the Park.

I also wondered if there would be people free-climbing El Capitan while we were there. A couple of years ago (before we cancelled this trip in 2020, if I'm remembering correctly), I watched the movie The Dawn Wall, the story of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson's free-climb ascent of El Capitan's wall of the same name. These people that do this sort of thing (not just Caldwell and Jorgeson) are crazy, climbing hand over foot without any support from above up the giant cliff, including taking food and tents or whatever they use for sleeping in at night while they are part the way up the cliff. And sure enough, there was at least one pair climbing the wall when we were there. I can't imagine what makes people want to do this but I'm sure the rush of completing that climb is just incredible. More power to them and Godspeed. Not something I'd ever be interested in doing but I'm glad we laid eyes on these climbers. We saw a group ascending Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming a couple of years ago. Both were impressive to see being climbed but El Capitan won this contest. There's absolutely nowhere to rest or lose concentration.

The Dawn Wall is a good watch, by the way.

El Capitan in the sun (top). And some folks free-climbing up the face (bottom).

The second thing about Yosemite that was awesome was ironically also one of the reasons for making it not so great. The winter weather that washed out roads and closed parts of the Park and drove everyone to the Valley floor (again...speculation on my part) also made the meadows in the Valley super green and created a rushing, roaring Merced River running right through the center of the Park.

We were told that the winter rains and snows and subsequent snowmelt filled the Merced up with three times the volume of water for a typical late June. You could tell. The river was just a series of super aggressive rapids in spots, particularly along the Vernal Fall trail and right near the sign at the entrance at the Park along El Portal Road. There is a rock that blocks about half the river near that sign which you can walk out onto so that you are pretty much right in the center of the river. The power of the water rushing down the riverbed was palpable while standing on that rock. It's an awesome experience to witness a huge volume of water running down a canyon at speed, particularly when you can get so close but are also in no danger of actually being affected by the torrent. Just don't slip.

All that water not only made the Merced more spectacular, it probably made every waterfall in the whole Park more impressive. I have seen a number of waterfalls in the past 10 years while traveling around this country and the world and with the possible exception of Multnomah Falls in Oregon, I'm not sure I've seen any that were better than Yosemite's. And there were at least five that we saw. My favorites were Bridal Veil Fall towards the west and of the Valley and the Cascades which were outside of the Valley to the west. I am sure we got lucky with both of these being way more full than they would normally be at this time of year. 

Cascades, Yosemite National Park.

We also loved the hiking at Yosemite. All of the beauty of the Park's meadows and cliffs and all that water everywhere made for some gorgeous backdrops and pathways on the hikes that we picked out for our one full day in Yosemite. We opted for the Vernal Fall trail up until the point where we got a pretty good look or looks at the Fall and the Mirror Lake trail all the way to the lake itself, which was supposed to be so still that it produces a picture-perfect reflection of Half Dome on its surface.

I thought Vernal Fall was a great hike, probably more so for the walk down and the scenery that was at our back on the way up. I thought the Fall itself was less something to see than everything else that we saw along that trek. Mirror Lake suffered a little bit from all that abundant snow melt. It was actually running while we were there and did not deliver on that reflection that was promised in our Yosemite guidebook. Oh well. 

The water at Mirror Lake was super cold by the way, which was very welcome on an almost summer day after a mile or so hike.

The Merced River near the sign at the Park entrance.

There are two things that I would definitely recommend doing in Yosemite based on our day plus in the Park. One is spending 15 or 30 minutes at Tunnel View towards the west end of the Valley. We did this stop as the very last thing we did before leaving the Park for good. As an overview of the layout of the Valley, it's a must see stop. You can see the whole place laid out before you right from one viewpoint. I wish we had gone here first on our full day in the place but our urgency in wanting to grab a good parking spot near Yosemite Village made us postpone this to late in the day. Mistake probably, although admittedly we thought we were heading up to Glacier Point to get an over-the-park view of the Yosemite Valley before reaching the sign that said that part of the Park was closed. We planned on stopping at Tunnel View anyway after the view at Glacier Point. We just ended up settling for the former and the former alone.

The second thing I'd recommend is spending some time after sundown looking up at the stars. 

I don't know what it is about being able to see stars that is such a source of wonder for me. I can't tell a star from a planet under most circumstances and I'm hopeless with constellations despite owning a constellation chart. I just don't get how these random collections of stars are supposed to resemble anything that looks like a picture. On a good day, I can maybe pick out the Big Dipper and maybe the three stars in a line that make up Orion's belt. But everything else about the heavens? Hopeless.

But put me out in a super dark spot at night away from city lights or any other sort of glow and give me a sky full of stars and I'm hooked. Especially if there's someone there to tell me what it all means. And lucky for us the Yosemite Conservancy conducts stargazing tours at nights for people like me who love looking at the stars but can't make any sense whatsoever of what I am looking at.

The Big Dipper (and a few more stars) as seen from the baseball diamond.

Just after the sun set behind the cliffs to the west of the Park, we set out from the Valley Visitor Center parking lot and took a quick stroll over to the high school baseball diamond within the Valley and laid down on a tarp and just looked up and listened to our guide, Cory, talk to us about what was in the sky above us. I know will not retain most of what he told us but I now know that constellations are really just a way of mapping the stars in the sky. They are not necessarily supposed to look like what their names project, and Cory interpreted some of the constellations in a different way than they are portrayed in the "official" version of the night sky. I will also remember that you can find the star Arcturus (one of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere) by following the curved handle of the Big Dipper (or the Plough, if you are English) until you come to something bright. Arc to Arcturus.

I was thrilled, by the way, that I could identify the Big Dipper on my own without any help. It's the small things, sometimes.

There's only so much detail that I can take when talking about the stars. I'm OK with the fact that there are other planets and suns out there but thing like the Big Bang Theory and stars exploding and things like that kind of freak me out. I'm content to just follow along with the super-powered laser pointer and have someone walk me through the names and maybe look through a telescope before heading back to the hotel and getting some shut-eye. And that's exactly what we did at Yosemite. As a bonus to the Park itself, this experience was perfect. It's so rare living next to a city that we get to see any stars. It's amazing when you truly get out in the middle of true darkness and can see them all. 

To me, the memories I'll take from Yosemite are the views of the meadows, the power of the Merced River, the view from Tunnel View and the time we spent looking up to the sky and learning one or two things (literally, that's all I will retain) about the night sky. Definitely worth a visit. We just hoped for more. Maybe one day when we have a little more time in our lives, we'll stop by again. This time when school is still in session.

The view from Tunnel View. Bridal Veil Fall is toward the center of the frame.

A couple of final notes about Yosemite. I've made reference to the Park being crowded a number of times in this post. We first arrived in the Park for the stargazing and passed a caravan of cars leaving the place for the night while we were on our way in. Understandably then, the Park was less than packed when we first arrived. We also found plenty of parking the next morning when we arrived at the Visitor Center parking lot at about 8 a.m.

But there are for sure warning signs on the way in of just how crowded Yosemite can get. On both trips into the Park, we noted amusement park-style signs noting the expected wait times to get to Park entrance station. We passed signs along the road from Mariposa for waits of 15, 20, 30 and 60 minutes. We sailed past them all and found no wait whatsoever but I wouldn't want to be a in a 60 minute queue to get through the gate. And the fact that the signs top out at an hour doesn't mean the wait doesn't extend beyond that time.

After our two morning hikes to Vernal Fall and Mirror Lake, we headed back to our car to eat our lunch and every passing car stopped to ask if we were leaving. We said no every time, including to the one car where we heard the girl in the back seat say "That's not very nice." I assume she was addressing us but what are we supposed to do? Take our lunch somewhere else and eat it? There were no picnic tables in sight. I know I've said this before but...early bird...worm. That's all I have on Yosemite.

Happy after a couple of morning hikes. At Mirror Lake.