I spent the night in Mariposa (ridiculously expensive), then headed up to Yosemite Valley after breakfast. In all of my California travels, I had never managed to make it to this corner of the state. I had been within 50 miles dozens of times, but never made the drive up to the Valley. It’s a truly lovely place, and probably worth all the hype that it gets, but also deserves the jabs it gets for being crowded. I’m glad I didn’t camp there, the campgrounds were all full and they reminded me of refugee camps with tents pegged next to each other in every direction. Not exactly a memorable wilderness experience. As the day progressed, more and more people came out to crown the trails and it got hotter and hotter, so by 1600 I had fortunately completed everything I felt I could do and bailed out. If you haven’t seen much of the great outdoors, Yosemite would be an OMGTISA experience for you. If you’ve been around a bit, then it’s still nice, but not mind blowing.
If you come in from the south, you get an initial view of the valley right after you exit the last tunnel, unsurprisingly, this is called the Tunnel View (not to be confused with tunnel vision) El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the back Center:
The source of the Merced river is in the Yosemite Valley:
It makes a scenic foreground for El Capitan:
There are a couple places that you can get a nice reflection of El Capitan:
You can also get good views of Half Dome with the Merced River:
Lots of nice meadows give you good views of Half Home:
This deer walked right by me as I was heading down one of the trails to the river:
Yosemite Falls is an impressive drop, but it’s a dry year so June looks more like August. In August it will probably be almost dry:
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