Yosemite still

Friday 1 June 

 First day of summer!

Took our time this morning. Breakfast was leisurely & I rang through to Yosemite Lodge to book 2 seats on the bus to Glacier Point for 1.30 p.m.

Meantime, we drove to the Tioga Road turnoff to the Tuolumne Grove trailhead to walk down to a giant Sequoia grove. It was a pretty walk down with lots of conifers & dogwoods in flower. Then we sighted the first sequoia. These huge trees have a lovely red colour (they are in fact a cousin of the redwood) & live for thousands of years. They are the largest living thing on earth & one of them in this grove is so big that a road was cut through the base of it! The preservation of the sequoias is what drove the movement to establish Yosemite as a National Park.

We then drove on down to Yosemite Village where we collected our bus tickets & then had a picnic lunch in the shade across the road from Yosemite Falls. Boy, is it a hot day - 86 deg F (or 30 deg C).


The bus trip up to Glacier Point was a pretty drive & we had Jack the driver who kept up an interesting patter about all things Yosemite (plants, animals, waterfalls, rock climbing, history, folklore).

Some lovely alpine meadows too.

The views at the top were spectacular. Great view across to Half Dome & the surrounding peaks of the Sierra Nevada range (some still with a little snow).

We walked back down to the valley floor via the Four Mile Trail (actually 4.8 miles). Boy, it's funny being in non-decimal currency land: we are constantly re-calculating. So we walked 7.7 kms. It was a very long constantly downhill hike. We were very tired by the end - & thirsty (we drank every drop of water we carried).


Some parts of the walk were in shade as we zig-zagged down the mountain but some were in bakingly hot sun.

But we saw a bear up really close!
It was munching on food just off the track - & at last we have a photo of one! (our other sightings in Canada were very brief; this one didn't move - but we did once we got our photo!)

We also saw another snake - & captured it on photo. We think it might have been a rattler. Will check with park ranger as we leave tomorrow (update: positive ID as a rattlesnake).

    
Finally we staggered off the mountain & wended our way back to the car! Drained the bottle of water there too. On our way back to Hetchy Hetchy we got some great photos in the evening light. Then dinner & off to bed.

Big drive tomorrow back over to the Californian coast - we will start south of San Francisco at Monterey to drive down Big Sur!

Total walk distance 17 kms.