Day 5 – Yosemite
Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Brad Cansler in He-Said-She-Said
We drove the rest of the way to Yosemite first thing this morning. There is a visitor center as you go in the north entrance of the park so we stopped to get Sydney’s Junior Ranger program. This one included a bag to pick up trash, a book to fill out activities and she had to participate in a Ranger led program. I don’t think we made a stop after that where she didn’t find some trash to pick up. Her bag was full after the first day. I’m glad she was so enthusiastic about picking up trash; it was sad there was so much of it.
The rangers were very helpful and made lodging suggestions (we didn’t have a hotel for the night – remember we weren’t supposed to be here) and even gave us a phone to use to make reservations. Our cell phones didn’t have any service.
We didn’t go far before we saw people stopped and sure enough there was a bear in the meadow beside the road. As we got out of the car to go look at it, we saw a bear on our side of the road in another meadow. There was no reason to try and fight the crowds to see that one when we had our own to look at. After taking some photographs and video we took off again. Sydney was really excited about seeing her first bear in the wild on this trip (she had seen bears in the Smokies).
After stopping several times along the way to take photographs, we stopped at a really pretty waterfall. Sydney wandered around a bit and is very proud of the fact that she found a trail that we could hike down to get to the falls. She is not crazy about hiking on the paved roads but give her rocks to climb and she can go all day.
Our first stop after entering Yosemite Valley was Bridal Veil Falls. We hiked to the bottom of the falls but the closer we got the more water there was. Water was poring across the paved path and the air was so full of mist we were wet before we even got to the bottom of the falls. What a treat awaited us; there was an intense rainbow because of all the mist at the bottom of the falls. The sun was in the perfect position; we were there at just the right time. At times it became a double rainbow. As we tried to take photographs and keep our cameras dry, we became more and more soaked. It was too pretty to pass up without Brad getting his big camera out. He literally had his back to the falls and just swung around and snap. He did that 4 times and we were amazed at the result. I mean I know he’s good but I was still amazed.
We stayed in the valley doing photographs at different spots until sunset. At one point Brad lost his reading glasses so we will be looking for new ones at the valley store tomorrow. We ended our day at the pizza restaurant located at our hotel. Pizza, salad and breadsticks; it was good which kind of surprised us. The room was great; it was located right on the Merced River which was really roaring because it was full of water from the snow melt. We opened the back door and windows to let in the cool air and sounds of the river. Sydney claimed that it was so loud she wouldn’t be able to sleep; that was about 30 seconds before she passed out!
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