The Yosemite Journals, Chapter Nine

My camping pals spent the first couple days in Yosemite looking at their "backyard" through my eyes.  They were showing me a place they love, a place they have visited every year since they were small children, and seeing it anew.

Yosemite Falls  can be seen from most places in the park, so we went for a close up view.

A walk through the tall Ponderosa pines, red fir, and cedars brought us to a viewing point.   A scramble over some rocks took me closer.

Norman and Kristy close enough to feel spray from the falls.

The next day, I finally got oriented as to the geography of this place.  It took a bird's eye view to accomplish that, and that view was at Glacier Point, directly up from where we were camped, but a thirty mile drive to get there.

Half Dome in your face.

That's Half Dome as seen from Glacier Point.  See the person standing on the rock in front of the face?  See the next photo.

I'm standing on the rock mentioned in the above cut line.

Kathy on the rock.

There's the rock we were on, at left..

Oops.  Got my photos mixed up.  This is the rock we were on, a side view.

Now that I got that out of the way...

Here are three photos showing the floor of Yosemite Valley, beginning at my left side and working towards the right.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls is in the center with Yosemite village to its right.  We are camped, I think, directly below the point where the rock ridge exits the photos, lower right.

Ahwahnee Lodge is at the bottom of the picture, right of center.

And Half Dome.

Farther right, beyond Half Dome, are Vernal and Nevada Falls.

At  last, I had the lay of the land.  I could leave the campground without fear of search teams coming after me, so long as I didn't wander up the Half Dome valley or over towards Vernal Falls.

We stopped a mile up the road for a picnic lunch.  Unfortunately, the bread for sandwiches hadn't made the trip.  Didn't matter.  We had plenty and we were getting used to the idea of the bread being missing.  With three bear boxes jammed full, finding anything was mostly luck.

Close to where we had lunch is where I saw this all-too-friendly coyote.