Day 1 of Yosemite- Yosemite Valley and Groveland, CA

We woke up early today to head into Yosemite Valley. For those of you who have visited Yosemite before, you know that the traffic in Yosemite Valley is absolutely nuts! Somewhere around 95% of all visitors to Yosemite National Park visit only the valley and nowhere else in the park. Naturally, we knew we would need to get there pretty early to avoid sitting in traffic and getting a parking spot!

We took the drive into the park, stopping for our usual National Park sign!

 

The drive into the valley was incredible! The views were ridiculous- you could see for miles! We got our first views of El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridleveil Falls.

 

We parked in the valley, and started walking toward the Lower Yosemite Falls. Our destination for the day, or what we were hoping to get to, was the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. To get to Upper Yosemite Falls, you have to hike a little over 3 miles one way, up 3,000 feet of elevation! We started the hike up, doing switchback after switchback. There were TONS of people on this trail, which really surprised me! The hike was pretty rough, and I wasn’t feeling the best on this particular day unfortunately. We made it about 2/3 of the way up, to Columbia Rock, where we decided to sit for a while a take a break. Neither of us were entirely sure we were up to the task of climbing another 1,000 feet up. We spoke to a few people who were on their way down at this point of the morning, and got mixed reviews of how hard the hike would be (one person said she hikes it all the time, and it takes her an hour and a half to go up and down! No way could we do that! It took us about an hour to get to the point we were currently at!)

Ultimately, we decided against doing the rest of the hike, mostly because I was being a wimp! We both agreed that we will come back and complete this hike another time. #goals

Here are some pictures of our views along the hike!

 

We got back to the base of the trail, and walked some more around the valley; stopping at the visitor center where we encountered a mother who had had enough of her family already that day (#kathy), using the GROSSEST bathrooms I have EVER used (seriously, pit toilets in the backwoods that are full of spiders are more desirable), and went back to the truck to eat some lunch. After lunch, we decided to walk back toward the valley, and hop onto a shuttle to go out to El Capitan.

El Capitan is a 3,000 foot tall granite monolith, and is a very popular location for rock climbers. We watched a documentary not too long ago where a guy climbed El Cap with NO HARNESS. So crazy. Most people take 3-5 days to climb it, taking gear and a “tent” with them for overnight. While at El Cap, we were able to use a ranger’s binoculars to see some of the people climbing!

 

We took the shuttle back to the center of the valley, and decided to head out for the day. We wanted to stop and do a hike where we could see some Sequoia trees. We decided to take the hike at Tuolomne Meadows. The hike was only about 1.5 miles, but it was kind of a bummer of a hike. We saw a few sequoia trees, which admittedly were pretty awesome. However, the majority of the trail was an old paved road, so it wasn’t exactly the nature hike we were looking for. On our way back to the car, we actually saw a bear in the woods, pretty neat sighting!

 

We headed back toward our campground, stopping in the city of Groveland. Groveland is home to the oldest operating saloon in California. I made Scott stop for a drink (much to his protest). We had planned on cooking dinner back at the camper, but walked past a place called “Dog Gone Good.” Basically, this guy had a grill and tables/chairs on his front lawn and ran a business! Scott really wanted a hot dog, but I don’t think he expected that the hot dogs would be massive! There went our dinner plans! We headed back to the camper to shower and turn in after the long day!