California National Parks of the Sierras - Trip Report - Day 8
Day 8 - Wednesday 6/27 – Easy it does it….yeah right!
Again I was up early and out for walk to the Lower Falls at 6:45. Amazingly, I found cell phone service along the trail, so I called in for the weekly planning and status meeting for one of my projects, my only work related activity for the entire vacation. After the call, I met Lynn at the room and we headed over to the food court for breakfast. The French toast was quite good.
After breakfast, we walked up to the Lower Falls and then on to the Village and looked through the Museum, Visitor Center, Ansel Adams Gallery and the general store. The store on the village is much larger than the store at the Lodge and I did finally find a golf shirt with “Yosemite” on it. The Museum has a lot of interesting information on the history of the park and the Native Americans who inhabited the area. There was also an art exhibit that covered the time span from the 1800 to contemporary (I liked the old stuff better than the new). We also walked through the Indian village behind the museum. Both here and another area further west in the Valley (just beyond camp ground 4) are areas that are actively used by the Native Americans. These areas are marked as such, so please respect their religious and cultural significance and stay out of these designated areas.
One interesting thing that I learned at the Visitor Center was that Half Dome was probably created in the shape that it is. I had thought that the shear face was carved off by the glaciers that worked through the valley, but the current theory is that the dome was formed much the way it looks today (the glaciers did a little trimming, but did not erase the “missing half” of Half Dome).
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My favorite stop in the Village was the Ansel Adam’s gallery. His photos of the National Parks are iconic. Some are so simple, let they capture the true essence of the parks.
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We also ran into Greg (our buddy from the Crystal Cave) outside the Ansel Adams gallery. We chatted for a few minutes. He mentioned that he had taken a photography workshop that morning that he thought was very interesting, so I inquired about the next offering, but unfortunately the next one was schedule after we departed…something else for the next visit perhaps.
After dumping our treasures in the room, we reloaded and headed out for a “short” hike to the meadows west of the lodge to see if we could see any critters and to look for climbers on El Capitan. We also had decided to take the bus up to Tuolumne Meadows tomorrow (rather than drive), so we stopped by the lodge and bought the tickets. Then we hit the trail.
Now Lynn is the navigator for this hike and it became a sort of stream-of-consciousness, seat-of-the-pants expedition. The idea was to hike out and catch some of the views we had last trip and see the meadows and maybe take the shuttle back. Well, that did not work out exactly as planned. We did not have the best map, so we were in the dark on the shuttle stops. The short story is that we hiked beyond the reach of the shuttle. We went 6 miles to the Pohono Bridge then on to the Valley View overlook, thinking this was a shuttle stop (hey, we saw two shuttles stop here as we passed by on the trail from above the road). Well, we did enjoy the views and we watched the swifts skimming across the surface of the river picking off bugs, but after 45 minutes, it was apparent that there would be no shuttle buses stopping here and that we will be hiking back.
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The outbound hike took a little over 3 hours but we had stopped and watched the climbers on El Capitan, enjoyed the wildflowers and butterflies and watched the ducks and trout in the Merced River. The return trip was 5.3 miles (we cut back to the trail past the restrooms at Valley View, rather that retrace our steps back to the Pohono Bridge) and only took us 1:50…and it would have been less, except we started taking photos along the trail once we saw that we would make it home in good time. So even though we put in well over 12 miles including our walk to the village this morning when we were looking to have an easy day, we still had a great time on the trail. Once we got back to Yosemite Lodge, we walked past one of the shuttle stops and saw where our plan went awry. Here’s the summary of this unplanned hike on EveryTrail.
We were back at the lodge about 6:30 and got cleaned up for dinner. Tonight we were finally going to the restaurant. It was pricey ($100 including drinks and dessert) but very good. The only downside was the limited beer selection (had to settle for a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale). I had the catch of the day, which was a Yellow Jack with crab dressing. Lynn had the prime rib. But the best was the crème brulee. Simply Excellent! Could be the best I have had; certainly in the top 2 or 3. This was where I got hooked on crème brulee back in 2006. It is all Lynn’s fault…and I thank her for that!
We crashed early tonight…23-plus miles of hiking over two days is tough on this ol’ hillbilly!
Here are some of the photos from today’s ramblings.
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