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Bear!! Baby Bear!!!!!

We had decided to take a quick trip around the valley loop on our way through Yosemite on our way to the Tioga Pass just to see if any deer were hanging around waiting to get their picture taken. We were almost done with the loop when we noticed that a couple of cars were pulled over to the side of the road and people were piling out of their cars with cameras. It was at that point that Alyssa shouted out “Bear!! Baby Bear!!!!!”. Our rental van quickly joined the others abandoned on the side of the road as we grabbed our cameras and piled out. A mother bear and her cub were walking about 150 feet off the road through the trees with a stream of people mirroring their progress walking alongside of the road snapping pictures.

The pair quickly scampered up a tree hoping we’d all just go away. We took several pictures, but unfortunately, the bears were just too far away for our digital cameras although we did get some pretty good shots with the video camera. The bears eventually gave up on waiting for all of us to leave and climbed down and wandered farther back down the road and deeper into the trees. We made our way back to the van very happy that we’d decided to take that one last look.

We soon found ourselves on the Tioga Pass Road, and after some brief stops for pictures of various unnamed little waterfalls and a bathroom and souvenir stop, climbing steadily upwards. By the time we reached Olmsted Point (which would normally be a great view of Half-Dome) we were in the clouds and it began to snow. We had planned to hike the .5 mile trail at Olmsted Point, but after walking less than .25 miles gave up as the visibility had dropped to about 50 feet and the trail had disappeared into snow drifts.

We let the kids play a little in the snow before deciding we’d better head back up to the van as it was still snowing and were a bit concerned that the rocks on the trail would soon get too slippery. I don’t think we had gone more than a mile down the road when we passed out of the snow shower. We stopped a couple more times whenever there was a convenient turnout near a snow drift so the kids could play in the snow for a bit. We stopped one last time at a parking area near a snow covered wet meadow and the girls played for about 20 minutes in a drift, including making a snowman. It turned out that this had been a good place to stop as less than .5 mile down the road we passed the “Tioga Pass – Elevation 9954 Feet” sign and the snow banks on the sides of the road vanished as we passed to the other side of the range.

After leaving the park boundaries, we headed south towards Death Valley. We had originally planned to visit some of the sights in Death Valley before exiting on the other side and spending the night in Beatty, but by the time we made it to Stovepipe Wells in the middle of Death Valley (and around 96 or so degrees) we decided instead to just press on to Beatty and re-enter the valley the next day on our way back to Las Vegas (although we did stop to take some pictures of some interesting sand dunes that Ashley pointed out to us).

Next stop, Death Valley, Las Vegas, and home!

The park wasn’t nearly as crowded on Memorial Day as it had been the day before (I figure most folks were on their way home) and we had no problems driving or parking within the valley on our second day in the park. Unfortunately, while it wasn’t drizzling like it had been the day before, the mountains were still pretty well socked in with clouds. The sign as we entered the park indicated that Tioga Pass (our planned route to Death Valley the next day) and Glacier Point Road were still closed.

We started the day by hiking a ways up Four-Mile Trail towards Glacier Point. It turns out that Glacier Point is around five miles up Four-Mile Trail, and it is quite a climb at an altitude change of 3200 feet. We never intended to hike to the top, an instead ended up hiking uphill for about 30 minutes which was about .5 mile up the trail with a resulting gain in altitude of about 600-700 feet (over 4 miles and 2500 feet short of the top). Not having a trail map, getting tired, figuring there wouldn’t be much of a view at the top due to the weather, and the thought of encountering snow on the trail once we got to higher elevations, we decided that was far enough and headed back down. Going down was much easier than going up!

Hiking had caused us to work up an appetite, so we parked in the day use lot again and took the shuttle to the Visitor’s Center and had lunch at the deli (as had been recommended by Karen’s friend). We probably could have ordered 3 or 4 sandwiches for the 5 of us instead of one apiece as we were pretty stuffed when we were done.

After lunch we took the shuttle to Happy Isle (yesterday’s shuttle black hole) and hiked the .8 miles to the footbridge near the bottom of Vernal Falls. While the path was smoother and wider than Four-Mile, it seemed much steeper (or maybe I was just getting worn out). We eventually made it to the bridge, took some pictures, and got a drink at the water fountain by the bridge.

We briefly considered hiking the Mist Trail up to the top of the falls, but once we saw the condition of the trail past the bridge (rocks and broken asphalt) we quickly decided we’d seen enough of Vernal Falls after-all. Unfortunately, this time the walk down was almost as bad (if not worse) than the walk up had been. With the path being as steep and smooth as it was, it was fairly hard on the knees and we were all glad when we had reached the bottom.

We finished our day with a visit to the Happy Isle Nature Center and then headed back to the van and back to our hotel in Oakhurst. As we were leaving we noticed that both Glacier Point Road and Tioga Pass were now both open! We decided it was too late in the day to drive the almost 2 hours up to Glacier Point (besides, the clouds were still prevalent), but did give us hope that we could drive over Tioga Pass the next day on our way to Death Valley.

Next stop, Tioga Pass!

When we were first planning our trip, we made our reservations in the same order as when we would be visiting that particular location, so it wasn’t until much too late that we realized we would be visiting Yosemite National Park on one of its busiest days, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Oh, well…

We had stayed in Selma the night before, so we had a bit of a drive ahead of us before we would get to Yosemite Valley. Karen had called while we were driving from Lake Mead to Selma to book the Valley Floor Tour (2 hour round trip) and the Glacier Point Tour (4 hour round trip). On her first attempt, we were disappointed to hear that they were all (understandably) booked up as it was a holiday weekend. A couple of hours later I had Karen call again just to check, and were pleasantly surprised to book the 10:00 a.m. Valley Floor Tour and the 1:30 p.m. Glacier Point Tour. We decided on only booking the trip up to Glacier Point and walking down Four-Mile Trail on the advice of a friend.

As we entered the park, we discovered that Glacier Point Road was closed (due to snow), so we figured we probably wouldn’t be taking the Glacier Point Tour after-all. We pulled into the valley with plenty of time to make our 10:00 Valley Tour, but I had some difficulty locating where the tour would be departing from. We were supposed to leave from Yosemite Lodge, but when we eventually found a sign for Yosemite Lodge, the parking lot it put us into had signs all over reading “Lodge Guest Parking Only” and there was no sign of the registration desk. We pulled back out of the lot and I apparently missed the sign at the next drive that indicated the tours were that direction. Seconds later the street we were on turned into a one-way and before I knew it we were past the lodge and were heading around the valley floor loop with no chance to turn around. By the time we made it back around, traffic was starting to pick up and we were getting close to 10:00. We decided to park in the day use parking lot and figured we could get directions to the lodge from one of the people directing traffic in the lot. The first girl we asked suggested taking the shuttle as it should get us to the lodge in about 5 minutes. The second girl we asked suggested walking as it was “not far” and would be “much faster than the shuttle”. Turned out she was dead wrong about the “not far” (it was more than a mile) and kinda right about the “faster than the shuttle” (the shuttle we were directed to was an express shuttle that only would have gotten us half-way after which we would have needed to wait for a different shuttle), but we didn’t know any of that at the time. So, we head off on a trot down the bike path in the direction we’d been given. After a .4 mile trot, we found ourselves at the shuttle stop for the other end of the express shuttle (having been passed by at least one bus) and with a sign indicating it was another .6 miles to Yosemite Lodge.

At this point Karen decided to run ahead and left me and the girls following at a walk. Karen managed to actually get to the tour desk at about 10:01 with the shuttle out front and quickly told the clerk that we were supposed to be on the 10:00 bus and that the rest of us were just a few minutes behind. She told Karen to tell the girl out by the bus to have the bus wait. Unfortunately, it was the girl outside’s second day on the job. As Karen told her we were supposed to be on the bus she waved goodbye to the driver (who pulled away) and then seemed to grasp what Karen was saying. She assured Karen that it wasn’t a problem as there was still room on the 11:00 bus. We walked up a few minutes later and got the news from Karen. So, while Karen and the girls hit the restroom I went to the counter to deal with changing our reservation. At this point, I was informed that the 11:00 had filled in the last 10 minutes, but that they still had some seats on the 12:00. When Karen and the girls found that out, Karen was not real happy that we were getting bumped back an additional hour especially since she had asked them to hold the bus and Ashley was really unhappy and instantly declared (a bit loudly) that she hated Yosemite, that the folks behind the counter were stupid and mean, and that she wanted to leave.

We eventually booked the 12:00 Valley Floor Tour and got the Glacier Point Tour refunded and now had about 1.5 hours to kill. We decided to try to have some fun and walked the .6 miles (retracing some of our steps from earlier) to the bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls and played tourist. As we left the falls and headed back to the tour desk for our 12:00 tour, we noticed that the park was getting more and more crowded. Little did we realize how crowded it would eventually become – after all, it was a holiday weekend.

Our tour of the valley floor was enjoyable and we got to stop for pictures at several spots, including a stop at “Tunnel View” which is right at the mouth of a tunnel which provides access into the valley. It had a nice (but cloudy) view of El Capitan, Bridal Veil Falls, and the Yosemite Valley. By the time we got back to the lodge around 2:00 p.m. the traffic had gotten very heavy and folks were parking on pretty much every reasonably flat shoulder they could find.

We decided not to try to use our van for traveling about the park the rest of the day and took a walk instead. We ended up going for a stroll through some trees and into one of the meadows on the valley floor (Sentinel Meadow maybe?). We found a path through the grass (whether it was human or deer, I’m not entirely sure), and eventually found our way to a foot bridge across the Merced River and the bike/pedestrian trail running around the valley floor. We walked for a while more along the trail (probably a total of about 2 miles) before deciding to catch a shuttle as it was starting to drizzle. We also wanted to go visit the 81 year old Ahwahnee Lodge near the Visitor’s Center. We got on the shuttle at stop 12 with intentions of taking it to stop 3 (the lodge). The ride to stop 13 took much longer than usual due to the traffic, so when we got to stop 13 I asked the driver if it would be faster if we got off and walked across the street to stop 21 (of 21) and waited for the next bus to come out of the Happy Isle loop. He figured it would save us at least an hour as traffic was very backed up ahead, so we got off and walked across the street. We ended up waiting for almost an hour in the drizzle and saw several buses go into the loop but none come back out. Finally one of the shuttle drivers going the other way took pity on us and convinced her passengers to all get out at the next stop and she turned around and came back and picked us up. We were saved! Or so we thought. Traffic was so bad it took almost 20 minutes for the bus to pull back out into the bumper-to-bumper traffic and make it through the next intersection where all the traffic problems were (about 150 feet from where we had been picked up). Once we made it through the intersection though, the next 2 miles took about 3 minutes as the bus then had a dedicated bus lane to use.

After visiting the lodge and gift shop, we decided to hit the Visitor’s Center and then call it a day. Unfortunately, the lodge is about a mile from anything, so we were forced to wait about 45 minutes for the next shuttle (at least this time we had a bench to sit on and a roof over our heads while we waited). We arrived at the doors to the Visitor’s Center promptly at 6:05 p.m. to see them lock the doors (it closes at 6:00), so we figured that was our clue to leave the park. We managed to time the next shuttle just right and were soon back in our van and headed for the park exit. Apparently everyone else had decided to leave around 5:30 as the park was definitely less crowded (and the traffic much lighter) than it head been earlier. We soon arrived at our new “base camp” in the town of Oakhurst, about 15 miles south of the park entrance.

Next stop, Yosemite on Memorial Day!