Yosemite National Park

I only got to drive into Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park; didn't even make it into a visitor's center to buy a patch (craft project forthcoming). However, I am confident I will go back. It is the first place I have ever visited that driving in looked just completely unreal because it was too much like the pictures.

Here's the half day adventure in photostream.

First stop: the Fish Camp post office. Got some mail off to my favorite kiddo.

The drive into the park is stunning. It was about 45 minutes from when I entered the grounds of the park to when we got to Yosemite Valley. It is an enormous wilderness area.

National parks are not immune to the ravages of wildfires. I'm sad for the trees but delighted for the view their demise made possible from the roadside.

Granite. In Yosemite, it is easy to conceptualize that the continental plates are granitic bedrock. It's also almost unfathomable that the grooves and slices carved out to make the valleys were caused by rivers of ice. The road to Glacier Point was closed, but the remnants you can maybe see there must be miniscule compared to the ones that carved this place.

That was going to be my campsite. Well, my second campsite at Camp 4 after the holiday weekend reverted the Upper Pines campground to reservation only. Also, it was never really my campsite because when we went to check-in, Piper was not allowed to be at this campground (even though we were sent there by the ranger at the previous stop. Alas, waking up to the ridiculously tall Yosemite Falls was not meant to be. This time.

I am confident that if I hadn't been recording the tunnel view video, there would have been a string of prayer-like expletives to accompany the marvelous works of an infinite universe.

Obligatory selfie to prove that I actually made it to this ethereal place.

It was divine intervention that kept me from getting snowed into the valley that night. I'll be revisiting in the winter, hopefully with enough financial means to not need to stay in a tent, because the crowds were ludicrous despite the impending weather. To find out what else you can experience in this and many other national parks, just keep coming back!