A Road Tripping Adventure: LA to SF Pt 3

Following on from Part 2 of A road tripping adventure: LA to SF which you can read about here and Part 1 here (have you read it yet?) we start off in Yosemite National Park after arriving the night before. The national park is really beautiful and covers such a massive area of California. I would love to go back again and explore a lot more of it and do the hike to Cathedral Lake and I would love to see Mono Lake too.  The next morning we drove into the park for sunrise and found a great lookout point called Tunnel View. This gave us great views across the valley to El Capitan and Half Dome in the distance. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t playing along very well so we had another boring grey sky for sunrise. I can just imagine what this view would be like with an amazing sunrise/sunset behind it!

After a flailing sunrise we headed back to our accommodation for a shower and some breakfast. The food options around Yosemite National Park are very limited. The best place we found was the little supermarket in Yosemite Village except the prices are a bit on the exy side. The best option would be to bring your own but then you can’t leave it in your car because the bears will break into your car to steal it as we discovered after watching the informational video at the Information centre. Yes, bears actually smash your car window and climb inside to get food. It was all caught on video!

Luckily we brought some Protien bars and fruit from Wholefoods on the way to Yosemite so we just snacked on that all day. I fell in love with Choc Mint Cliff bars. Probably not the healthiest with all the Soy ingredients but it was a better option than some of the food places around.

After breakfast we headed back into the park and caught the shuttle bus up to Mirror Lake. (Oh and just a note, the information centre is right up the top of Yosemite Village. We walked around for about an hour trying to find it. We ended up finding it by walking through the supermarket and out the back and heading up towards the Ansel Adams Gallery. It was right next to the that. The place is not very well signed!)

Because California has been in drought for so long there was no water left at Mirror Lake. It was just a dust bowl. Im sure if it wasn’t in drought it would have been beautiful with reflections of the mountains into the lake!

Notice in the picture above, there is a really dark blue patch in the sky. This is from my circular polariser. You have to be really careful using a polariser in the middle of the day because it can play havoc with your pictures if you are not 90 degrees to the sun. Its almost better not to use one for shots like this!

Once we got back to the village we had a burger for lunch at Grill which was pretty average and we saw a deer eating the leaves off a tree and a squirrel eating a nut This was the first wild life sighting since we arrived so I was a little excited. I know that squirrels are probably a pest in the US but I think they are the most adorable things ever!

On another topic, just wondering why do the public toilets in America have such huge gaps at the side of the doors? The toilets were closed for cleaning at lunch time so there was a massive line up and I was the second person in and took the middle toilet. I could see everyone standing at the sinks waiting! Lukcy I was just doing a tinkle! TMI? 🙂 Have you noticed the big gaps in the doors before?

After lunch we decided we wanted to see the big Redwood Trees because we were going to miss them on the other side of San Fran due to flying instead of driving to Portland so we drove to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and had an awesome time walking around looking at the gigantic trees and talking to another photographer that we rant into. I could not get over the size of these trees. It was incredible. Apparently giants sequoias are the largest living thing on earth and can be up to 4,600 years old. Pictures don’t even come close to portraying how massive these trees are!

After exploring the park for a couple of hours we headed back to Yosemite National Park for sunset at Glacier Point which is a really beautiful spot overlooking another area of the National park. This time we were in luck with a tiny bit of colour in the sky! Hoorah!!

After a massive day of  exploring the area we headed back to our accommodation for Pizza and bed! The next morning we were up early and headed into the park again for sunrise  at the creek just before you exit the park. Im not sure what this area is called. Its really pretty though but again, no colour in the sky!  Boo!

That was the end of our time in Yosemite. All in all, the park has a lot of natural beauty and I think in a different season it would have been so much more beautiful. Like I said previously, this place would look magical covered in snow. Do you think Yosemite is as amazing as everyone says it is or are there other parks you prefer more? Let me know in the comments below!