Yosemite National Park - July 4th

We left San Francisco to head towards Yosemite National Park, with maybe not so great timing, in that we’d be spending the day there on the 4^th July (Independence Day public holiday and long weekend over here) – but regardless of the crowds (which we were expecting regardless of the date really) it was fantastic!!

We headed out most of the way to the park the afternoon before, after a lazy breakfast in San Francisco, and watched the temperature gauge in the car go up and up and up… All the way to 110°F (over 43ºC), which isn’t so great when your air conditioning doesn’t work! But having the windows down does a pretty good job! Thankfully it went down to about 35ºC by the time we were getting to sleep… with all the windows and the back door open. We’d been pretty lucky to get campsites when ringing up each day for availability that night, but knew that wasn’t going to happen at Yosemite, where the campgrounds book out within 15 minutes of reservations opening 3-4 months in advance, and the for other half which are first come first served, there are lines starting at 6am… So we sort of figured we’d just work something out.

Needless to say we had a pretty warm day at Yosemite, and that combined with the lack of places to stay meant that we ended up having just the one day there rather than more like we’d planned, so no big hikes like we’d sort of hoped, but the smaller ones are fantastic too!

We drove up the winding road to Glacier Point, where there are the most amazing views I’ve ever seen (and obviously photos don’t even slightly start to cut it!), and did a short hike to the top of Sentinel Dome, which is at over 8000 feet altitude. The views from there were 360º and fantastic, and it was such a nice clear day! The massive sheer faced rock in the photos is Half Dome, which drops down to the valley floor and is a super impressive sight. It’s possible to walk/climb to the top of Half Dome (NOT by the sheer rock face!) but it’s an absolutely all day thing starting from the valley floor (just 4500 or so feet u, including lots of winding around), and it required permits which book out way in advance, so we gave that one a miss… We saw people at the very top though, looking extremely tiny! Across the valley from Half Dome is North Dome, next to another dome I forget the name of…

View from Glacier Point - Half Dome on the right, North Dome on the left

Vernal Falls (I think) from Glacier Point - with part of the path to Half Dome winding up the right hand side

Us in the heat at Glacier Point

Half Dome up close, with tiny people on top

Sentinel Dome (tiny compared, but up very high) which we walked up

Yosemite Falls - massive (over 2000 feet) drop

And down the other end of the valley is El Capitan, a beyond gigantic rock face that a lot of people apparently climb. I’d rather not think about just how high that is, but I’ve seen Megan’s photos of hammocks strung up on the rock face, as it’s a 2 day climb (eeuck!!) – We didn’t see anyone up there, no matter how hard we looked, but park rangers came rushing around in the afternoon asking if we saw anyone fall, as they’d had some reports… Seems base jumping is reasonably common from there…

Looking down the Yosemite Valley from Sentinel Dome, with El Capitan on the right

We saw some pretty cool animals in the park too – a yellow bellied marmot (looked pretty similar to a squirrel, except much bigger), LOTS of squirrels, a few adorable chipmunks, lots of birds, and some deer, including a very cute little buck wandering alongside the road. No bears though…

A yellow bellied marmot, before we had any idea what it was...

Chipmunk, looking a little like the king of Pride Rock...

Looking up the valley to Half Dome, with El Capitan on the left, and Sentinel Dome the rounded lump to the right of Half Dome

El Capitan, looking a lot smaller than was the case!

Clouds Rest and Half Dome from the other side

Half Dome and the part that people climb up on cables to the top

All the same, there are signs everywhere in the park warning about bears and the need to keep food in the bear proof containers provided when camping – so we decided not to stay on the side of the road sneakily somewhere in the park, especially after seeing a photo of a car which a bear smelt had food in it… But of course we didn’t manage to find anywhere else to stay either, being lovely weather and a long weekend in a crowded spot, so after driving nearly a couple of hours from the park, we found a spot on the side of a quiet road, and managed to freak ourselves out (wisely, I think!) about bears (still bear country, after all) – was very very hot still so didn’t sleep great, but I must have been asleep as I woke up pretty quick when Lawrie said ‘I hear something in the bushes, we need to go… NOW’ (or something of the sort)… So we ended up driving back towards the coast for a couple of hours before having a decent sleep in a car park near a petrol station… The sunrise was nice though?!

Haha a most interesting experience that if repeated hopefully won’t be in bear country or in such hot weather! But Yosemite was absolutely amazing, crowds aside – most definitely worth a trip out of your way to see it!!

Lawrie about to take his 'shower' for the night

Sunset as we headed out of the park

Sunrise the next morning, on our way to the coast