Had dinner in Fresno at an unusual restaurant chain I’d never heard of, before continuing north on CA-41 towards Yosemite National Park. Fingers crossed that we’d be able to find a place to stay. Stopped at the first (and last) city before the park: Oakhurst; stopped at the first hotel we saw, which advertised free wireless internet (hooray!), and which apparently had the only vacancies left in town; posted my first dispatch from the road and crashed, alarm set for early.

At some point north of Fresno, it became a lot hillier and woodsier, but we hadn’t seen the transition traveling in the dark. So our drive towards and into the park Monday morning was a welcome departure from the flat Central Valley of the previous day.

We stopped after driving through a very long and rugged tunnel to emerge before a classic view of Yosemite Valley looking towards Half Dome.

Yosemite is big. Pretty much all the photos I took are vertically oriented. We took lots out the car as I drove through the park, passing by smarter (read: safer) drivers who’d actually pull over to photograph what they were seeing.

Everything was so BIG!

Here we are approaching the grand dame herself, Half Dome.

After some reading on the park the night before, we decided that the 10-14 hour trek to the top of Half Dome and back would require a little more advanced planning and chutzpah than we had bargained for, so we settled on the Mist Trail to Vernal Fall and then around and back again.

This trail was no joke. As soon as we got on it, it started taking us up. Breaks were frequent. Here Stephanie is celebrating taking one.

Finally we get close enough to see and hear the 317 feet high Vernal Fall.

So I figure, why not get a little closer and actually feel the fall? It’s just a little ways off the trail. Though there wasn’t a torrent of water flowing, the sound it made hitting the cliff wall was something akin to a jet engine. And the mist it threw off sporadically made it difficult to capture what I eventually found at the bottom: a rainbow!

After a little scrambling through the mud to get back on the trail, we climbed countless steps all the way to the top of the waterfall.

Thar she goes!

After resting and snacking we began to loop back around, thinking the top of the fall was as high as we were going to ascend. But the trail continued upwards, eventually to an amazing view above Vernal Fall. Look how tiny those people are!

Here’s a panorama looking back toward Nevada Fall, with Half Dome on the far left.

Yosemite Panorama

Finally it appeared that we’d ascended as far as we were going to. The trail was quiet, we were the only ones on it except for a speed-hiking father-son duo. The sun started dipping below the valley walls. The quality of light against the mountains was tremendous. Everything that had been shimmering blue-gray now reflected yellow-orange.

We left later than we’d planned (we still had to drive back to San Francisco that night), but we got to see the sun set and moon rise over the park. Just outside the park we stopped in the pornstarishly-named town of Buck Meadows to chow down. I had a well-deserved chicken fried steak, Stephanie a juicy burger.

After a long drive after a long day after a long weekend, we made it home to the city after midnight.

• Towards Mono Lake
• Yosemite in winter
• Saguaro National Park
• A hike in Big Bend
• Into the Desolation Wilderness

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