Yosemite is amazing! We were really impressed with the place. For those who don't know, it is a massive forest in California with plenty of breathtaking views, wild animals (bears!) and other interesting stuff. We stayed in Yosemite Valley in the heart of the Park. The valley floor stretches for about 10 miles and is overlooked on the north and south sides by massive cliffs reaching 3,000-4,000 ft above it (this is quite high when you consider that the floor itself is at 4,000ft). Not only are the cliffs amazing, but they have numerous postcard quality waterfalls scattered throughout. Yosemite falls (pictured below) are the highest in North America.
Nearby is El Capital, apparently the World's Biggest Monolith (whatever that is) but it's a big chunk of cliff anyway. It's also infamous amongst base jumpers for non-geological reasons.
The most famous landmark of Yosemite is the Half Dome - another big cliff. (Did you know that the logo of outdoor clothing brand The North Face is actually meant to represent the North Face of Half Done).
Don't want to sound like an encyclopedia but there's just so much to talk about with Yosemite. Elsewhere in the park, there are the Giant Sequoia trees. These trees are the largest living things in the World and they live for over 3,000 years (they’re even older than Jim!) In one, they even cut a road through it – more to demonstrate its size as they could quite easily have gone around it! Only when you see one right in front of you can you appreciate just how massive they are. They are immune to bacteria and even fire. However, they are very unstable. Although they reach up to 300ft (100m), the roots only go down about 6-8ft and when they do die at the end of their long life, it’s usually because they just fall over.
Even though the park is well set up for tourists, it doesn’t even have a commercial touristy feel (well…maybe it’s just because it’s off season).
In our short time there, we saw summer and winter just days apart. When we entered the park, there was fantastic sunshine, but we had to cut our trip short a few days later when a big snow storm rolled in closing most of the trails. Our one gripe about the place was that we were not permitted to drive the 10 miles to get out of the park without buying snow-chains for the wheels (which are expensive for an RV!) There was a road block stopping you. (To make matters worse, we spent about 30 minutes struggling to get the chains on, only to realize that it was actually a rear-wheel drive, and we had put them on the front – doh!)
However, the roads were extremely well maintained and all the snow had pretty much been cleared. A bit ironic that the Park Service require snow chains when driving on the well maintained roads, when there are much more hazardous routes in the park (windy narrow cliff edge roads with no safety barrier which we had driven the night before….in heavy rain….and fog….in an RV) that are dangerous even without snow, and they let us drive them regardless. All in all, we had a great few days in Yosemite and would recommend it to anyone.
Before...
...and after...
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