Notable Times: September 2021

I had always wanted to see Yosemite National park but had never been, even though I was born in the California Bay Area. My parents had been many times, including on a 50-mile hike there, and had lots of photos of the area. They also took the family and their exchange student (from Turkey) there once when I was older, but I was a missionary in Korea at the time, so I missed that chance as well.

So when our friends Rob & Melissa Lym invited us to join them on their 3-day trip to Yosemite, we were excited to go. Having just been to Kaua'i, Sienna didn't dare miss any more school, so Linette and I went with Rob and Melissa and their two youngest kids.

Thursday morning, September 23, 2021, we got up around 6a.m. and headed to the airport. There we got in our "first hike," as we hoofed it from the check-in desk to the very furthest gate in the new SLC airport (close to a mile). It's all part of the "new Salt Lake Airport exercise program."

As soon as we got our rental van, we headed straight for the park. We could see evidence of previous forest fires as we drove along. It had been a horrible fire season for California (with smoke all the way over in Utah and beyond for the past few months), but there weren't any fires right near Yosemite.

One of my favorite things about this whole trip was seeing forests everywhere, which reminded me of growing up in California and Oregon.

We pulled over at the first lookout we came to (since one of the kids needed a break from the winding roads).

This raven made a low clicking "glurp" sound.

Soon we drove through the mile-long tunnel and pulled over at the Tunnel Overlook. It was amazing! I immediately recognized El Capitan and the Half Dome on either side of the valley.

The half-dome has an especially recognizable shape.

We were disappointed but not surprised that Yosemite Falls and Bridal Veil Falls were not running this time of year. (The upside was that the park was not crowded at all).

We found a place to park, walked a while to get to a picnic area, and then found it completely unusable due to the swarms of yellow jackets that attacked our food. So we ended up walking around briskly in order to stay ahead of them while we ate. "Nothing like a nice relaxing picnic," Melissa commented.

This bird really wanted Linette's lunch, too. We were glad to get out of that place.

This lady had hiked to Nevada Falls, which would have been awesome, but Rob was recovering from a broken ankle, and we weren't sure the youngest would handle it, so we did shorter hikes.

We decided to hike to "Mirror Lake/Meadow" (no water at this time of year) and then to the "Happy Isles".

Being from Utah, the kids hadn't seen tall trees too often. And these weren't even the big ones.

It was a lovely walk through the forest.

Grant found a little lizard friend.

There were cool boulders along the trail.

The kids and I climbed on top of one of the boulders.

When we reached "Mirror Lake/Meadows", it was indeed dry. But it offered a nice view of the Half-Dome face-on.

Linette demonstrates where the water line is in the spring.

Here we are pretending to swim and canoe at Mirror Lake.

Grant found a huge stick with what looked like two yokes for oxen.

I tried to imagine what this scene would look like with water.

So I used Photoshop to simulate a reflection of sorts.

(Photoshopped simulation of Mirror Lake)

We saw little squirrels and chipmunks throughout the park. We especially liked the grey squirrel with the extra bushy tail.

We loved this cave-like collection of rocks.

There were amazing rock formations wherever we looked. This is the "North Dome".

This tree sort of looked like it just walked over here.

We went to "Happy Isles", which is a collection of islands in the middle of the the Merced River.

Grant decided to wade in while his father kindly offered him acorns from above ("Incoming!" <splash>)

There were cute wooden bridges that connected all the islands.

There was also a boardwalk that went over the "Fen" (marsh).

And since we had gotten up at 5:50am in Utah that morning, it had already been a long day, so we made our way back to the car at that point.

The evening light provided dramatic lighting for all the rock formations.

El Capitan looked especially great that evening.

When I zoomed way in with my 200mm telephoto lens (11x zoom), I could just see some rock climbers. In this picture, there's a green speck in the middle.

Zooming way in on that photo (and cropping it), you can see two guys climbing.

We saw one more over on the right side (See the red dot to the right of center).

Zooming way in on the above picture, you can see two guys with some gear.

Keep in mind that El Capitan is about 3000 feet tall.

We pulled over at the Tunnel Overlook again, and I loved how it looked towards evening.

When they were making the road to Yosemite, they found it was easier to dig a 1-mile tunnel through the rock than to find a way around it.

Here is a time-lapse video of driving through the tunnel and along the following road for a bit.

We listened to Harry Potter, book 2 as we drove down to Oakhurst, California.

The place we stayed was very nice.

It had a hot tub we used the first night, and had an outdoor place to eat (or catch up on e-mails) in the mornings.

Friday morning, September 24, 2021, one of the kids thought there were vultures outside (because of the red heads). I went to look and found that it was a flock of wild turkeys.

After we picked Rob up from his conference, we went to Mariposa Grove. Due to Rob's broken ankle, the gal at the gate was kind enough to give us a handicap pass for the day, so that we wouldn't have to walk the extra mile from the lower parking lot to the upper one (where some construction was going on). The ranger at Mariposa Grove who let us through took his job very seriously, though, and told us to absolutely not give anyone a ride back down with us. He didn't think it was funny at all when Rob asked, "What if they offer us $100?"

Once we got up there, we immediately started seeing a bunch of beautiful redwood trees.

Those puppies are huge!

I love the distinctive color and texture of the bark. It reminds me of growing up in California.

There was evidence of previous fires throughout the area. Redwoods can often take a bit of fire as long as there isn't too much undergrowth to make it too hot.

There were quite a few fallen trees in the area, too, so they don't all last forever.

At one point, Ruby didn't want to go quite as far as some of the others, so she and Melissa took a more direct route to the Grisly Giant.

Meanwhile, the rest of us went to see the "Faithful Couple", a pair of redwood trees whose trunks have grown together to look like a single tree.

Here is the Tunnel Tree. It had already had its core burned, which is what made the people think they might carve out the tunnel without hurting it much more.

This tree is called The Grisly Giant, due to its gnarly branches and trunk. It is the largest and oldest tree at Mariposa Grove, and said to be the 26th largest tree in the world. It estimated to be about 1800 years old!

From the side, you can see that it leans back quite a ways.

Here is the same tree from a ways back as we walked to the parking lot.

Not all of the huge trees in the park have special names, but they're still beautiful. It always helps to have people in the shots to give some perspective.

So pretty.

There was some construction going on in the area due to damage form fallen trees like this.

After leaving Mariposa Grove, we dropped by the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, where we saw some old coaches...

...a covered bridge (important to keep it from rotting back when they were made out of wood)...

...and some pioneer cabins that had been relocated here.

A ranger was talking to some volunteers out in front of one building.

We couldn't go inside it but we could look in through the front door. Apparently, these buildings have been neglected for decades and used for storage (and as a home for rats...), so this ranger is leading an effort to turn them back into something the public can go inside and enjoy.

After that, we drove up towards Glacier Point. We stopped at a great overlook there and had lunch.

From there, we had a side view of the Half Dome.

We could also see Nevada Falls (top) and Vernal Falls (bottom). Both falls were a mere trickle compared to what they are in the spring, but we were glad to finally see any water in a waterfall.

Nevada Falls

Vernal Falls

This raven hopped over to ask for some of our lunch.

It was standing literally right next to a sign saying not to feed the animals. Sorry, bud.

We really liked this lookout.

When we got to the official Glacier Point, we had a wonderful view of the valley. We could also see the Half Dome from a little further over. In this picture, you can see a few dots in the little curve at the top. Those are people! There's apparently a way to hike up there. They are so tiny!

There was a telescope there for everyone to enjoy.

It zoomed in further than my lens. You can just barely see the people at the high point.

The view of the valley from Glacier Point is pretty hard to capture in a picture, but it was awesome.

Linette and I FaceTime'd Erika while we were "on top of the world", and showed her our view.

She said, "Do you want to see my view?" Then she showed us this.

I thought she was going to show us her dog Mabel.

We all got pictures with the Half Dome.

After that, we drove down to a trail head and hiked down to Taft point. The hike was 1.1 miles each way, but this sign makes it look like "11", so maybe we should go with that.

Though we were seeing a lot of rocky landscapes, the hike was through a forest the whole way.

There were occasional rock monsters along the way.

Finally, we got to where you could see so far down that it was freaky.

Here is Linette, just a few feet from a drop-off that was hundreds of feet down. This was the moment that I felt my first vertigo of the trip.

Linette lay on her front and looked straight down from where she was, and I later did, too, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Much of what we were standing on jutted out over a negative incline.

The pictures don't do it justice, but this video might offer a glimpse of what it was like.

This picture seemed reminded me of the phrase "caught between a rock and a hard place".

I also saw this cool blue-green lizard.

While I was taking a few pictures, the Lyms and Linette made it up to the one spot that had a railing.

It was way the heck over there, and it was a long, long way down from there.

I soon went up to that lookout as well. From there, I could see this guy on the next cliff over balancing on one foot.

Zooming out, you start to see how far down it was from where he was balancing.

This shows how the cliff goes 2,000 feet down to the bottom of Yosemite Valley.

The view from Taft Point was the most impressive to me of the whole trip.

Here was a tree we saw on the hike back to the van. It seemed to show that just because life doesn't go the way you originally planned, that doesn't mean you can't keep on going and do just fine.

The sky was just a little more smoky that night as the sun set.

The foosball tournament that night was between the moms vs. the kids. (Kids won).

The next morning, I heard some rustling from where I was eating breakfast. When I went up, I saw that the flock of turkeys was back.

They were joined that morning by some deer.

Each time we drove to pick up Rob from his conference, we passed by this house that had gotten crunched by a fallen tree.

Bummer.

I was kind of excited to see a bear during our visit. Rob & Melissa were on the way to the grocery store our first night when a bear ran across the road in front of them!

But these were the only bears the rest of us saw on the trip.

On Saturday, September 25, 2021, we drove through Yosemite Valley again on our way up to the northern part of the park along Tioga Road. I liked some of the less-often-pointed-out cliffs to the south as you go through the valley.

We stopped at the Yosemite museum, but it was closed (perhaps because of COVID and/or the season). But they had a section of a redwood out front that Grant stood by to show how big it was. Little markers showed what date things happened, including (from inner to outer):

825 A.D.: inner most ring
1066: Battle of Hastings
1215: Magna Carta
1492: landing of Columbus
1620: Landing of Pilgrims
1776: Declaration of Independence

and so on.

I heard Melissa say, "That's a big tree!" Turns out, the sign agreed.

The thing Linette was especially interested to see was the reconstructed Indian Village of Ahwahnee, which offers outdoor displays about the culture and lives of the Ahwahneechee inhabitants of Yosemite Valley. My favorite part of that was the round house, which is half underground, and is still used for Native American ceremonies today.

Here is the inside of the round house.

And here is the round house from the back side.

Here is a typical structure. Once the white men arrived, the indigenous people started to adopt their way of building structures, so the simpler ones started to disappear.

The park had a little cemetery there, too, with graves mostly from the 1800s.

As we continued through the valley to get up to Tioga Road, we could see El Capitan again.

We had watched the documentary on Netflix the night before, called "Free Solo", and it gave us a greater appreciation for what it takes to climb that mountain. It takes most people several days to do it, sleeping attached to the cliff face each night. The guy in the documentary practiced and planned for 8 years, and then finally went all the way up in about 3 1/2 hours. Everyone was pleasantly surprised when he didn't die (especially his girlfriend, who he later married).

You have to drive through part of the valley to get from the south entrance of Yosemite to the upper area.

As we drove along Tioga Road, we saw some cool smooth, cracked rock formations that we climbed on for a bit.

From there, we could see Tanaya Lake in the distance.

We stopped to have lunch at Tanaya Lake. I set up a hammock, and Linette sat in it and read a book.

I thought it was cute when Melissa and Ruby were chatting by the side of the lake.

The kids went down to wade in the lake, and I took a little swim, too. It was pretty chilly.

The weather was very nice for us the whole trip.

After an hour or so at the lake, we continued up the road, seeing more rock formations jutting out of the forests.

We went as far as Toulumne Meadows (pronounce "too-AH-luh-mee"). Apparently this is gorgeous in the spring, with lots of wildflowers and marshy reflections, but in September, not so much.

At the suggestion of my cousin Janette, we downloaded the "GypsyGuide" app and paid the $10 for the Yosemite trip, and got a guide that would pipe up every so often as you drove down the road, telling you what was coming up, orienting you to the park, and telling you what you "must" see (Mariposa Grove, Glacier Point, the Tunnel View, El Capitan, the falls, etc.), and what things were more optional.

We were also listening to Harry Potter (book 2) as we went, so the guy would just sort of interrupt right in the middle of things. "Hagrid let out a sigh and said...Coming up on your right is the turn-off to Glacier Point..." We started calling the GypsyGuide guy "Mr. Happy."

The guide told about how Yosemite used to be under the ocean; was pushed up by tectonic plates colliding together; was shaped further by glaciers grinding through the valleys; and how erosion exposed the bald rock surfaces at the top, but dirt accumulated elsewhere to support trees and other plants. Or something like that.

Here are some climbers going up a slanted rock face.

Rob's friend told him that May Lake was his favorite hike, so we decided to squeeze that in during the little time we had left that evening. We hiked it pretty fast.

The path was an interesting combination of natural rock paths and stairs with a bit of human intervention.

There were some pretty cool trees growing out of the rocks.

The sun was setting as we neared the lake.

We soon reached May Lake, and it was so pleasant to sit there for a few minutes and hear the little waves lapping the shore. It seemed like a great place to camp (though the "no camping" signs were confusing, given the several tents set up there...)

There were a couple of kayaks up there, which seemed like great fun.

If you look closely at the base of the tree in the picture above, you see this huge mushroom-like chunk of fungus sticking out of the tree.

After a few minutes there, we busted a move back down the path.

We dropped by Tuolemne Grove to see if we had time to check out the redwoods there, but it was a mile before the first big trees, the sun was almost down, and everyone said that what we saw at Mariposa Grove was better anyway, so we called it a day.

It was almost dark as we made our way back through Yosemite Valley.

We dropped by a Mexican restaurant that night in Oakhurst to get some food to go. Everyone was pretty tired by that point.

The next morning I woke up early and sat on the front porch to read, and the turkeys came by again.

This time the ladies were accompanied by a Tom, who shook his tail feathers at me menacingly when I stood up to take pictures.

It was Sunday, so that morning we logged into the Zoom broadcast of our church, which was stake conference that week, and we really enjoyed watching that. The AirBnB person was kind enough to let us check out late so we could finish watching.

While we waited for it to be time to go to the airport, we drove over to nearby Bass Lake and hung out there for a couple of hours. Someone had started a small stack of three rocks, so I built it into this creation.

The kids waded around in the water for a while. I set up the hammock and read, did some church calls, and took a nap.

The kids collected a big pile of rocks and then turned them into this spiral, with the word "Yosemite" at the top.

We ate lunch at the picnic area there, where we were again swarmed by yellow jackets and had to eat our lunch while we walked around briskly to avoid being harassed. (I later read that if you put out some cucumbers, that might keep them away. Apparently yellow jackets dislike cucumbers even more than I do. :)

Finally, we flew back home.

Since our flight was later than the Lyms', Sienna picked us up at the airport. It was nice to be home again.

We had seem some beautiful stuff, and I was struck by the size of the trees and the impressive cliffs from both above and below.

While I had never been to Yosemite National Park before, that doesn't mean I had never seen pictures of it. As I have been scanning my dad's extensive photo collection, I came across quite a few pictures that he took there over the years. To finish up, here are some of the pictures he took in 1961 and 1974.

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The river and falls were flowing at that time.