At long last, Yosemite

We left behind the chilly Bay Area for the warm valley early in the morning; after a stop for coffee, we arrived in Yosemite Valley. After $30 USD, we were in and cruising along the national park of my dreams.

To give some background: when we were in elementary school, we had to research an area and promote it through a brochure/diorama (my childhood brain is not reliable enough to say for sure which). Somehow I stumbled across Yosemite, and it ended up being the topic of my project, and  eventually on my bucket list for places to see. It definitely felt surreal to finally be here over a decade later.

The valley was a lot more touristy than I could have imagined - I definitely needed more than a day to explore all the mountains and trails Yosemite had to offer. We walked down to Mirror Lake, which was more of a puddle in the summer, and then headed up to the Glacier Point to see the sunset. The drive down the mountain during sunset was both glorious and terrifying. I would not recommend novice drivers to drive past sunset as it is extremely easy to drive off the edge of the cliff.

Another word of caution - things may look close but roads are sparse. Our inn looked like it was just several miles from the valley, but in reality, we needed to loop all the way around the whole park to access it, and we ended up hitting the hay at midnight. That didn't stop us from going out to stargaze for a little while...

Climbing the Half Dome will be a new goal - I shall practice hard and hopefully will knock this off in the coming years. A night (or a few) stargazing is definitely in order as well - I can't wait to be back.