Tales of Yosemite

Hello again, readers! I'm back from my San Francisco trip, and I thank all of you for indulging me the time off from the blog. I had an amazing time, full of amazing adventures I'll probably spend the next week or so sharing.

I'll start from the beginning, which was not actually a San Francisco adventure. When my boyfriend and I were planning out things we might do on the trip, the thought of Yosemite National Park came up. We knew it wasn't quite "close" to San Francisco (it's a four-hour drive away in fact), but it's certainly closer to there than it is to Denver. It seemed like it would be a shame to be that close and not to go.

So that became the plan -- we'd fly in on our first afternoon, then just drive straight out to the last significant town west of Yosemite, stay there, and spend "day one" in the Yosemite Valley, the seven-mile stretch of the park that contains its most well known attractions.

You drive into the Valley right by the famous El Capitan, and pass four huge waterfalls on your way to the visitor's center. We got in several good pictures...




...and then picked out a trail to hike to take us to Mirror Lake. Well, it turns out that a major rock slide in 2009 has blocked off that path completely, though we only found this out when we'd driven back in there, hiked as far as the "trail closed .7 miles ahead" sign, and decided we'd already committed too much time to this trail to go back and choose a different one. So chose to hike on in as far as the trail closure anyway, and maybe see some of the rock slide.

One advantage of taking the trail marked "closed ahead" is that very few other people are hiking it. We had the place pretty much to ourselves -- or at least, as much to ourselves as I could ever imagine getting in such a popular tourist destination. (And by the way, entrance to the park was free for Veterans' Day weekend.)

I was never a big nature guy as a kid, and the journey from there is let's say still a work in progress. But this was a really enjoyable hike in a beautiful place. A great way to kick off the trip.

We finished up in the mid-afternoon and started the long drive back to San Francisco, where we'd wake up to begin our second full day. And I'll pick up from there in an upcoming entry.