This post is another that ticks off a bucket list item. A visit to the world famous Yosemite National Park. However today’s trip didn’t exactly start off with great confidence.
“Gee Pee Hiss”
As per normal once in the car we fed “Yosemite National Park” into our trusty Garmin GPS. Big mistake! The GPS devised the shortest route for us and not knowing any different we took it. By the time we realised what sort of dangerous road we were on it was impossible to turn around. All up we were on about 20 miles of single lane but 2 way road that wound down a steep valley to a river crossing, back up the valley, over a ridge then down another steep canyon before widening and joining a ‘main’ road. There was not a single place to pull over and should we have met a vehicle coming in the other direction someone would have had to back up for many miles. I am not exaggerating here. We were honestly worried. Even if it was 2 lanes wide it was a dangerous drive with near vertical drop-offs on the side. Our phones put our altitude at over 450 metres on the first GPS pix and 80 metres on the graffitied bridge pix. So the drop from the top would easily have been 370 metres. The upside is that we saw a bit of the wildlife on that deserted route. We were talking with a Casino staffer later that day who couldn’t believe that the road was still open. It had taken so many lives she thought it had been closed.
Eventually we escaped to arrive at a typical country town before sighting our goal from afar. At a lookout (or overlook as they are called here) we could see Dome Rock in the park some 20 miles away. A model of the view also helped indicate the rock for those that didn’t know what they were looking for. The lookout wasn’t all we saw. A tiny caravan behind a Jeep caught Shane’s imagination. From this point it was a simple but attractive journey through the forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Yosemite National Park.
It was Teddy Rooseveldt that began the sanctioning of lands to be put aside for public lands in perpetuity. The first ever was Yellowstone followed a year or so later by Sydney’s (now named) Royal National Park. Yosemite followed a year or two later again. The section of park developed for easiest access to tourists is
. The most prominent features here are Half Dome Rock, Yosemite falls (with upper and lower sections combining to drop 2425 feet), Bridal Veil Falls (620 ft) and El Capitan yet the ‘valley’ is only 7 miles by 1 mile of the 1200 sq miles that the park takes up. There are 18 mountain peaks over 12,000 feet (Keep in mind our Mt Kosciusko is only 7300 ft).
In the gallery that’s Half Dome with Yosemite Sam overlaid on it while El Capitan can be seen a few photos later behind Shane & I in the next selfie. One of the sad parts of the day was the ignorance of the tourists when stomping over the park like it was an insignificant area. The second and third photos after Yosemite Sam you can see tourists stomping through the grassy meadows. To do this they have to walk ove signs staying to keep off so the grass can survive and flourish. Another photo later on has a dumb tourist hand feeding a squirrel despite signs (and common sense) saying ‘Don’t feed the wildlife it will actually kill them’.
Despite these fools we had an all up great day. Before we left we saw deer and there’s a pic there of the traffic jam that is normal for a week day (weekends we’re told is pure hell) which is why the NPS puts on a free shuttle bus service that takes you around the park for free. Its hop-on, hop-off every few minutes. Later that day the rain came down almost spoiling our view from “Tunnel View” lookout but in the end we shot some mystical looking shots of the mountains in cloud cover. The trip home from there was pretty uneventful but by the time we got back to our van the lure of a bought tea at the casino was too much to resist.
Cheers for now.
Garry & Shane.