Guess Where I've Been... Part IV

  There's no excuse. I knew better. I really did. I have no one to blame but myself. Everything I've read, everything everyone has told me, all the warnings, all the publicity, the news -- all turned out to be completely true. As the Brits would say, "Spot on".
   I was hoping to do some more good hiking, just like Friday. The weather forecast predicted a gorgeous day, with temperatures in the 70's. Perfect for a Saturday on a wilderness trail in a National Park. I should have known better.
  The first hint of trouble came at 8:00 a.m. I had gotten up at 6 a.m., showered, eaten breakfast, and packed. I was on the road by 7, leisurely driving the 60 miles from my hotel room in Fresno, up to Yosemite. The first hour, I covered the first 50 miles without incident. But then, at 8:00, traffic stopped, and thus began the bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go crawl up the mountains.
   It took me another hour and a half to go those last 10 miles, on a road that can best be described as a series of 500 hairpin turns, with a thousand cars in front of me and another thousand behind.
  The second hint of trouble came at 9:30, when I passed the sign that said, "Yosemite National Park Entrance Station 1/2 Mile Ahead -- Expect 20-30 Minute Delays -- Have Money or Pass Ready".

The third hint came a half-hour later -- at 10:00, as I pulled into one of the seven lanes of the entrance station. (The sign had been "spot on"!) I had the following conversation with the entrance station ranger.
Ranger: "Good morning and welcome to Yosemite National Park. Can I see your reservation, please?"
Me: "Reservation? Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"
Ranger: "No, I'm not. All our accommodations and campgrounds are full and booked solid through the rest of the summer -- and have been since March."
Me: "Oh, well, that's no problem, then. I'm only here for the day."
Ranger: "For the day? Just one day? Well, you're a little late for that. It's already 10 a.m."
Me: "Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"
Ranger: "No, I'm not. Yosemite Village, Half-Dome and El Capitan are all at least 20 miles in from here. Given the traffic, you'll be hard pressed to get there and get back before dark."
Me: "Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"

He wasn't kidding. When it got dark at 9 pm, I was still 6 miles inside the park, which didn't make me very happy. I don't like driving after dark in areas inhabited by deer. Given my eyesight, I also am not too enthusiastic about driving on mountain roads that consist of a thousand hairpin turns -- and no guardrails -- after dark.

The fourth hint of trouble came at 10:01 a.m., as we continued our conversation:
Me: "Okay, forget the points of interest. Can you recommend some hiking trails that don't have a bazillion people on them?"
Ranger: "Yes, I can. I've heard rumors that Death Valley National Park has a couple of trails like that in August. It's about three hundred miles to the south on Highway--"
Me: "No, no, no, I mean here, in Yosemite. Are there any trails here in Yosemite that don't have a gazillion people on it?"
Ranger: "A trail without a gazillion people on it? In Yosemite? In August? Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"

Alas. All day in Yosemite National Park, a full 12 hours, and how much hiking did I get in? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zippo.

Why not? Isn't a hike on a crowded trail better than no hike at all?

Yes. Definitely. But the real reason I didn't go hiking was... I couldn't find a parking place!

All the lots were full, the overflow lots were full, and the sides of the road for miles in each direction were completely full.

By waiting in line, eventually, I was able to get out of the car. And fight the crowds for a spot on the path leading to an overlook
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And then wait in line for a turn at the view
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Sheesh. Have I written before about how much I dislike crowds? Once you get to the front, the view is actually quite nice. Half dome is an impressive piece of work. It is even more impressive when you realize it is solid granite. What's more impressive is, Half Dome is actually one of the smaller of the mountains in this range! It is at least 8 miles in the distance, here.

One of the bigger ones is El Capitan. It is probably ten times the size of Half-Dome.

Like the ranger had told me, I wasn't able to get in and back out before dark.
This is the famous half-dome shot taken an hour or so before sunset, from the bottom of the Yosemite Valley. Ansel Adams made this view famous. The mountain is huge, and is about three miles away in this shot.

At dark, I was still well inside the park, ...and way up in the mountains.

However, even though I couldn't manage to get to a hiking trail, I was able to snap a few good pictures during the day. I don't know if you are familiar with the Grand Tetons from Wyoming; someone once said they couldn't understand why those sharp, jagged, uninviting harsh rocks were so named, if you know what the french word tetons means in English. No, in my mind, these three domes (shown below) here in Yosemite are more appropriate for the name "la Trois Tetons". This set of mountains is right across the valley from Half Dome
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Okay, get ready to be amazed. Click on the picture below and look closely. That's Half-Dome on the left, looking edge on. Notice how little it looks compared to all the other granite in this view. Okay, just wait, there's more! Look just to the right of center, and you'll see another "half of a dome". There are two waterfalls, one directly below, and one at the bottom right of the second half-a-dome. See them?

Here's a telephoto view of the second dome and the waterfalls.

And here's a closer view of the top falls. If you look closely at the very top of the falls, you can see a wooden bridge crossing the river at the top. And if you get out your magnifying glass and look left of the bridge, you can see a bunch of people, standing on a platform. See them?

Okay, below is a pic of the bottom falls. Click on it. Now on this picture, look closely at the very top right-hand corner of the picture. Get out your magnifying glass again. See the people on the trail in the upper right corner of the photo?

Okay, here is the amazing part. Now that you've got a perspective of how tiny the people are compared to the falls, go back to the first picture, the panorama view of the whole range including half-dome, and try to find those people again! That will show you the majesty of these mountains. (No, I'm not just showing off the telephoto lens that came on my Canon! I just wanted to give you some idea of how huge these granite mountains are.)

In spite of the thousands and thousands of people, I did find a few off-the-beaten-track side paths, and got a few shots of the, um, wild life, if you can call it that.

I think this is a ruffled grouse. The colors didn't come out well, but it's really a pretty bird.

And this was another beautiful bird, a Stellar's Jay, I think.

I've concluded that deer are simply wild cows. When it comes to avoiding danger such as highways, they have all the intelligence of a handful of sand.

These animals all live within earshot of people. There was no place I went today that I couldn't hear people talking, babies crying, teenagers giggling, horns honking, busses idling, and motorcycles revving. To get off the solidly-populated trails, you have to have a backcountry overnight permit. Yosemite reportedly has a lot of real wilderness, but it apparently takes at least a week to get to it. I got to see about 5% of the park.

In addition to Half Dome, El Capitan, and the waterfalls, it has the famous Bridalveil falls, the famous Yosemite waterfall (one of the highest in the world), at least three stands of huge old California redwoods, and a dozen othe major attractions. But by spending 12 hours inside the park, I was only able to see two: Glacier point (elevation 8,000 feet, where the upper views above were taken), and the bottom of the valley where the Ansel-Adams-like picture was taken. The very first picture in this post shows me in front of El Capitan, with Half-Dome in the far background. It was taken along the road to the bottom of the valley.

The ranger was "Spot on": it took almost four hours to drive the 19 miles to that spot. I should have known better. A day hiking in Yosemite? Yeah, right. "Ha-ha-ha. Good one. I must've been kidding."