[18 August, Tanju] “Finally” because I haven’t/couldn’t visit this most famous of the California national parks while I lived in Los Angeles for seven years and frequently visited California afterwards. Now, we had planned to visit Yosemite for at least half a day on our way to San Francisco.
We left our hotel in Vegas at 7 am. Our route was going to take us north through the eastern border of the Death Valley. After the heat in Las Vegas we were having second thoughts, but seeing that the road to Yosemite would take at least 8 hours, we decided not to visit Death Valley. We stopped at a truck stop & motel at Indian Springs on US 95 for breakfast. The road through the desert was a straight line and mostly empty. I was reminded the scenes in many Vegas movies where the killer brings the body to bury in the desert.
The tour guides were recommending two alternatives for a single day visit to Yosemite: Either the valley or the northern route from the Tioaga pass. Our preference was the valley with its more iconic vistas. But our navigation device took us to the Tioga Pass entrance, which is open only in summer, unbeknownst to us. Having visited the much larger Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks in one day, this did not deter us from visiting the northern route as well as the valley.
Ali and I also had secondary agenda in Yosemite: We wanted to shoot our own wallpaper photos in preparation for the Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) release in the fall. We had several opportunities at El Capitan. But the famous falls were dry due to summer. The gigantic Redwood trees were impressive. In spite of the frequent bear warning signs, we did not see any wild animals of note. The park was very crowded probably due to being close to the metropolitan San Francisco area.
We left the park as the sunset approached.