Day 24- Yosemite N.P. Day 2

Day 2 of Yosemite- Glacier Point, Sentinel Dome, and Mariposa Grove

Day 2 in Yosemite took us back to the valley (very temporarily), to stop at Bridleveil Falls and to see Tunnel View. Bridleveil Falls was incredible! It’s such a landmark view at Yosemite, so we were glad to see it early in the morning when not many people were around to obstruct the view. Tunnel View was a beautiful view of Yosemite Valley, but the sun wasn’t the best in the morning for pictures, so we decided to come back later in the afternoon on our way back to the camper since we wouldn’t have to drive through any of the main valley traffic.

We then headed out of the valley to go up to Glacier Point. This is a part of the park where you are 3.000 feet above the valley floor. It’s a paved area, so no real hiking here. However, the views were incredible! We got a really good view of Half Dome, and seeing the valley from so high up was amazing! Scott was definitely nervous, and didn’t like that I wanted to look over the edge (behind a wall and gated area!)

We continued on to the Sentinel Dome trail head, where we would be doing a hike that day. Sentinel Dome is a 2.2 mile hike to the top of a granite dome that boasts incredible 360 degree views of Yosemite. The hike was fairly east, with the exception of the final climb up the dome (I actually couldn’t figure out how we were supposed to climb up because the view up to the dome shows a vertical cliff face!). The views? SO WORTH IT. This was our favorite hike during Yosemite and I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was.

We then decided to head to Mariposa Grove, a grove of sequoias. There is a fairly new looking welcome plaza, and then you take a shuttle back to the grove (to reduce traffic and pollution in the area of the grove). We did the Mariposa Grove Trail, which was a really nice trail that they have recently updated and put in new railings to keep people on the trail and off the root systems of the sequoias. We also spoke with a ranger who told us how to identify a baby sequoia tree! After that, we spotted them everywhere!

We went a little off the beaten path, to take a trail that not many other people were on- we definitely enjoy the quiet of nature with each other! We saw the COOLEST thing on our hike back to the shuttle. I looked up in the sky, and thinking that my sunglasses had some weird glare, realized there was a full circle rainbow around the sun! We could see the entire thing! It was incredible!

We headed back to the camper, and decided to hike one more trail called Merced Grove. We were saddened by this trail as well, because the majority of the hike was just through a regular forest, with the end goal being a pretty small grove of sequoias. The coolest part of this trail was the deer that we saw along the way! We could get so close, they weren’t afraid at all!