Yosemite

One day I woke up and realized my kids had become teenagers before my very eyes, and we were long overdue for a family vacation. When I asked them where they wanted to go, they said “Yosemite”, and since I hadn’t been there in about 30 years, it seemed like I was long overdue for a trip there. We picked out a few other things we wanted to do between here and California, like visit a fire lookout tower in the Mt. Shasta area and see Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, and we made a backcountry reservation to backpack a couple of nights in the park. With a little planning, we had a legitimate family vacation to look forward to in the summer.

Driving to California took all of a day, and we made it to a state park near Yosemite just after dark. The next morning we made it into the park and caught our first glimpses of El Capitan and Half Dome. I had seen pictures and watched all kinds of Ken Burns documentaries, but I really had no concept of the scale of these peaks. I have seen a lot of mountain ranges, but this was impressive on a different level. Having grown up by the Olympic Mountains and now living in the Oregon Cascades, I’m used to layers of mountains building up to high peaks and rolling on as far as you can see. Here, the mountains rise out of the valley floor like towering giants out of nowhere. It’s quite a humbling perspective. We enjoyed the views from the car on our way out to Glacier Point Road and our trailhead, and backpacked in to Ostrander Lake the first night (more on that in the next post.) 

After two days in the backcountry, we hiked out and visited Glacier Point since we were so close already, and took in some breathtaking views before heading down to drive the loop through the main valley. Nothing could have prepared me for the enormity of the mountains from the valley floor, nor for the standstill traffic jam that ensued for the next 3 hours. Both were memorable in their own right.

We saw some pretty amazing things while we were sitting in the Great Yosemite Summer Traffic Jam, so all in all that was a good experience. The rangers told us we could stay in any backpacker’s camp in the park for one night following the dates of our backcountry permit, so we made the drive out to Tuolumne Meadows and arrived right at dusk. It seems that rolling into campsites late was the theme of our trip, but to be fair, we had a lot of ground to cover. Tuolumne Meadows was a great place to wake up and enjoy the morning before heading out of the park, and we got to meet some interesting people heading off on their own backpacking adventures on the PCT, John Muir Trail, and other nearby trails. That backpacker’s camp was a happening place!

Although our time in Yosemite National Park was brief, I saw enough amazing things in three days to know I need to make another trip back. The kids were equally impressed, which I consider a great accomplishment where teenagers are involved, and I think their interest was sparked to return to Yosemite for more backcountry explorations. All the writings of John Muir about the majestic mountains and valleys of Yosemite make sense to me in a much more concrete way now, and I love imagining what it must have been like coming across the valley for the first time. We are extremely lucky to have all of our National Parks, but this one is a gem.