Biking Through Yosemite

Today's journey brought us back to Yosemite to explore the Valley by bicycle. 

Our first stop was Mirror "Lake." It was more of a meadow than a lake since there was zero water around. But we walked into the middle of it and had some incredible 360 deg views of the valley.

Then we circled the Valley and found the Sierra Club's first visitor center for the park. After a brown bag lunch, we explored the Yosemite Cemetery near the Visitor Center. The center was closed (due to COVID), but they had a large section of a Sequoia on display that showed it was almost 1000 years old. 

When we got back to our RV, we took the Motley Crue on a long walk to the National Forest nearby. They got to see more wild turkeys and a buck bounding into the forest from us about 50 yards away.

More like Mirror Meadow!

View from Mirror Lake. Half Dome is above the rock.

Agnes was very curious until she realized we were not packing (food that is).

There is an interesting story behind this first visitor center to the park. To Good Buddy it looked like a church.

The cemetery was interesting to walk around.

This tree was 1,100 years old when it fell. WHOA! That is old.

Entering the National Forest on our dog walk... Nice to have a quiet walk in the woods. Good Buddy ended up picking up lots of litter off the road since our dog bags are oversized.

More Gobble-Gobbles on our walk. They were so sensitive. You just look at them and they'd run away.

 

Where's the Fly Swatter? And why do I feel so small?

We drove into Yosemite today and explored Yosemite Valley. The drive was scenic and a bit scary (Mother Trucker again, this time driving Miss Fit, thought he was at the Grand Prix). The Oh $#!+ handle was used by Good Buddy on the way down the winding steep road to the valley. 

Once in the valley we were in awe of how HUGE everything is. It is like Paul Bunyun and the Jolly Green Giant's Playground. The trees are tall and wide, the rockscapes are monsterous, and even glacial boulders are ridiculously big. The only thing that wasn't big was the water. At the end of the summer it is pretty dry. 

We managed to hike up to Vernal Falls Lookout Bridge and back (it was a moderate 2 miles to that point and the rest of the way up was much steeper, so we headed back). On the way up, Mother Trucker navigated the empty and peaceful trails - although the gnats were out of control. At the top of what he thought was the trail we saw others down below on clearly a better trail. Turns out, we had used the "stock only" (i.e. horse) trail on the way up - hence no people! That was fine by Good Buddy. On the way back down, the vistas were incredible! 

We also hit up the base area of El Capitan and Brideveil Falls. A solid first day exploring.

A lot of construction going on outside the park. PS. why is her hard hat sooo large?

Massive trees and forests.

Good Buddy' s defensive anti-gnat wardrobe.

Giant boulders are everywhere.

Good Buddy dropped her phone in this hole trying to take a photo. Mother Trucker remained calm and got it out. Crisis averted.

Big trees are everywhere and we haven't even gotten to the Sequoias!

Tiny stop sign for tiny people?

Half Dome.

Before....

After.

Lower Yosemite Falls ( falls sans water)

El Capitan is a beast!

Across the street from our RV park is this church and country road that we walked the dogs by this evening.

They had wild turkeys too.

These two horses were very curious about the Motley Crue. Too bad our mutts were acting like maniacs.

Yes, I am publicly shaming Houdini for eating the napkin that had my peppermint bark crumbs in it.