Playtime!: Yosemite: Biking & Photography

When we were in the valley on Tuesday we discovered that not only is biking the way to travel in the valley, but you can rent bikes! We were told that the bikes sometimes sell out by 10 am so it was another early day to get into the park.

We easily found a parking space at Yosemite Lodge and got our rental bikes. Mine was extra cool – it was pink with flowers! Although it was very beat up! We left Mom at the Lodge with her Kindle and an undiscovered gift shop and headed to both the Mist Trail and Mirror Lake.

Luckily riding a bike is just like riding a bike and you don’t forget how! It was so great to be speeding past all the people on foot and coasting down the gentle hills! I only had to get off and walk once! We rode about 2 miles out to the start of the Mist Trail. The guy we rented the bikes from said you could walk to the bridge and see both Vernal and Nevada Falls. He also said that the bridge was very close, no need to climb the trail! (The Mist Trail gains about a 1000 feet of elevation ever mile! It’s an intense up and downhill hike! To the top of Vernal Falls it’s 1 mile and 1000 feet and to the top of Nevada Falls it’s 2 miles and 2000 feet – and then you have to walk back down!) We couldn’t find where he was talking about so we started up the Mist Trail. There was a bridge with a view of Vernal Falls about .8 mile up – we turned around there, but it was was still a good hike! The trail was straight up!

Vernal Falls is where the 3 people were killed earlier this week. To my knowledge, they still haven’t recovered the bodies. So yes, the morbid/reads a lot side of me was looking in the river, although I’d rather not see that! The river was raging! What I’m sure are usually small-ish cascades were raging rapids. The whole river was white and frothy from crashing over the rocks. Really makes me wonder what those people were thinking climbing over the barrier. The Merced looks ready to swallow another victim at any time!

The hike back down wasn’t as bad as it could have been! The trail was paved and that made it easier to just walk quickly down hill! I was watching carefully for errant rocks and twigs, it was so steep that one wrong move would have been painful!

We made it the 1.6 round trip in just about an hour, considering the elevation change I thought was was pretty good! Almost 2 miles and hour!

We weren’t going to have time for Mirror Lake though, we’d told Mom we’d be back for lunch at 12:00, so we hopped on our bike and headed back to the lodge. Interestingly enough it was downhill most of the way! (How a basically flat valley can be downhill on both sides is beyond me!)

We had lunch in the food court and it was pretty good, then took a quick trip through the gift shop and it was time for Mom to meet her bus. Since Dad and I were taking the photography class this afternoon we got Mom a ticket for the 4 hour Glacier Point Tour – that way she could see the view from Glacier Point and hear all the stuff that the tour guides told about. She had a great time!

After we got Mom off, Dad and I headed off on our bikes to the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Village. We were taking a class called “In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams”. We learned a lot about how to use our cameras and how to take good pictures! I learned how to use a number of things on my camera, including how to shoot in manual mode! Usually when I shoot it’s more about composition, but now I have some actually photography skills to add to the mix! We also saw the spots where Ansel took a number of photographs and learned about his life and work.

When we got done with the class we were at the Little Yosemite Falls trailhead, which is pretty much right where we’d parked the car! This would have been nice if we hadn’t ridden our bikes over to the class! We ended up having to walk back to the post office in the Yosemite Village to get our bikes and then ride them back!

We’d planned to have dinner in the park and stay for sunset on Half Dome. Awhile back Mom had picked up some “backpacker” meals on sale at Target. We decided if we bring my Dad’s “Ruby Burner” (a portable butane burner) and some water we could mix up these “MREs” for dinner. It was a great plan until we forgot the silverware! Luckily I had a spoon in my backpack – I’d considered taking pudding for a snack, but then didn’t and my dad and I each have a “picnic knife” that has a fork and a knife. We thought we were good to go until one of the “MREs” turned out to be Chili and not the pasta dish we thought it was! We shared the spoon and it all worked out! The dehydrated dinners weren’t bad, although they were both more “side dish” rather than main course and we hadn’t brought anything else! Oh well, we didn’t starve!

After dinner we drove back to one of the spots where we’d been during the class – a neat spot where we could see the Merced River (wide, flat and calm here…people float down it and swim in it!) and Half Dome – to watch the sunset again! This time Dad and I were armed with new knowledge of how to capture the sunset! I haven’t looked through my pictures yet, but I think I got some good ones!

Tomorrow Dad and I are going back up Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows to do some hiking and see if the wildflowers have started to pop yet! Tomorrow is our last day in the park – we are going back to Oakland on Saturday!

PS: Since I was learning about using my camera and stuff today I left all the “crappy” pictures in the album. Please forgive the zillions of shots of the same view – each one is different in some way, not even sure if I know how, but the settings were different!