Yosemite

Greetings,

We left from Ellie's house about 1330 on the 22nd. The bus was in about as good a shape as we could get her and it was time to go. It's always sad leaving your children but Ellie is coming home for Thanksgiving so that won't be too long.

After a longer drive than it should have been we were near our objective, an "RV Park" just outside Yosemite. However, it got dark and we had no phone service so we pulled into a free campground in the Stanislaus National Forest. It had all the luxuries, a pit toilet and nothing else. We woke early, packed up and drove to Buck Meadows for a hot breakfast. Turns out our RV Park was about 5 minutes from where we stayed!

Twelve miles to Yosemite. Doesn't seem like much but they were hard miles, giving and taking several thousand feet of elevation in that distance. Our thoughts of driving back to the campground and spending two days in Yosemite quickly dissipated. Driving into the Yosemite Valley is awesome! We were greeted by El Capitan with a small red speck on his face that turned out to be a climbing expedition. I'd rather just jump off the top, because I'd be dead anyway!

That's a lot of Granite!!

Sometimes just walking in the park you loose track of where you are and then look up to gorgeous views that surround you. We walked to Bridal Veil falls but there is just not much water at this time of year. Still very impressive, however. Yosemite Falls was dry. The campgrounds in the park were filled so we really had only part of one day to experience what we could. We did not have time to get to Glacier Point which is one of the best viewing spots of the valley. We were not able to do as John Muir recommended which is to spend some time and look around. I guess he did just that for about 40 years and is responsible more than anyone else for what we are able to enjoy today in 1200 square miles of wilderness (with roads and shuttle buses). The following picture is not photo shopped even though I thought so when I looked at it.

I'll say it before one of you other smart asses does, in the picture you can see half dome, and old bald dome.

We left the park and headed out the South along Rt. 41 toward Fresno. To the East along the Tuolhume River and over the Tioga Pass (9,945') was asking too much of Rose. We got to Oakhurst and found a campground for the night. It had hot showers and campers who were here for the Native American flute festival. Pretty neat to hear the attendees practicing. Time to pack up for the run to Mojave. More later.