Yosemite, 1st visit

We finally made it in to Yosemite on Friday. The rangers told us that the weather was unseasonably cool (so what's new?), but for us Michiganders it was just fine. We had mostly sunny skies and some breeze, but overall it was a marvelous day!

After traveling from the East Entrance through the park and visiting the River Valley area, I can understand why a geologist might enjoy visiting this park. I found it quite interesting to see the different rock formations, both large and small.

There were several places that provided grand vistas as we drove through the park. This picture was taken at a very popular place. There were many people taking turns shooting family photos for each other. Everywhere we encountered people in the park it was not unusual to hear several different languages being spoken.

I managed to convince Bev and the kids to hike back into a grove of giant sequoias. The hike turned out to be fairly strenuous as it involved a 400 ft. elevation change. It was worth it, though, as seeing trees that big just can't be described adequately with words or pictures. Notice on this picture that I have my arms spread (7' span) and I'm holding a 5' long stick and the total span doesn't come close to the total diameter of the tree (at least near the base).

The snow melt continues to provide a fair amount of water for the various streams in the park, so we found several nice places along the streams for pictures.

This shot was from the base of Bridal Viel falls. Maybe not quite as impressive as it is during the early season snow melt, but very nice just the same.


As with Yellowstone park, I could easily spend a week here without feeling like there was nothing left to do. I would like to do more hiking to the less-traveled places, but that's just not always possible. We're planning on going back into the park on Monday in hopes of seeing parts of the park that we didn't have time for on Friday. Bev's not really looking forward to the drive to the park, however, as there aren't any nice straight roads that get you there...

Our car vs. the mountains

So far our car has done pretty well with mountain roads. It probably helps that most of our mountain driving has been done in areas where we don't have to go real fast. On the trip from Jackson WY to Reno NV we finally found a spot where the mountains gave our car all it could handle. The mountain pass we took out of Jackson included a couple mile stretch with 10% grade going up and a corresponding stretch with a 10% grade going down.

Bev was driving and she was worried about whether or not our car could handle it. On the uphill side she had the gas pedal firmly glued to the floorboards during the entire stretch of 10% grade. On the downhill side she used a low gear in the transmission, but she still had to use the brakes a great deal.

The car reported gas mileage on the way up of around 5mpg, but the downhill side kind of made up for that!

To the edge of Yosemite

Today we finished the trip from Jackson WY to Lee Vining, CA (just east of Yosemite). We intended to go into the park for a while this afternoon, but we were all a bit tired and some of us weren't feeling 100%, so we just took the afternoon off. We did cruise past Lake Tahoe on the way to Lee Vining and I can see why people enjoy vacationing there. We tried to take a tram ride to the top of the mountains, but it was broke so we couldn't go. Bummer.

I'll get some pictures up eventually, but the internet connection here isn't so great and I don't feel like fighting it to try and upload pictures.

Tomorrow: Yosemite all day! Yay!

Tuesday in Yellowstone was AWESOME!

Tuesday was an awesome day! We had great weather for sightseeing so we took advantage of it as best we could. We dragged the kids out of bed early again (and grumbling was heard all around...), but once we got in the park we had a great time.

We started with a complete tour of Mammoth Hot springs:

From Mammoth Springs we stopped at Tower Falls and then headed through Dunraven Pass. This pass was closed on Monday due to snow but they managed to clear it out enough to let people through on Tuesday. We stopped at one of the pullouts and found a snow wall that was created by the snowblowers. People had left graffiti carved in the snow and Katie spotted "Nicole" carved in the wall. She really misses her best friend Nicole, so she thought it was neat to find this.

A few more sights later, we stopped at the West Thumb Geyser Basin where there are some interesting thermal pools, including this one that has a very pretty coloration:

Of course, what visit to Yellowstone would be complete without a visit to Old Faithful:

We managed to make it down to the Tetons before dark and found a place to take some pictures of the girls next to Jenny Lake:


Wednesday was a bit boring - we drove ALL DAY! It gave me time to work on our picture collection, but by the end of the day we were ready to get out of the car. Bev did all the driving and the last hour or so in to Reno NV were really stressful because it had gotten dark and then the wind picked up and it was really pushing the car around.

It is Thursday morning as I type this and we have a bit more driving today, so I better get going.

Yellowstone pictures from Monday

I posted some info about what we did on Monday, but didn't have a lot of pictures. Monday and Tuesday were spent in Yellowstone park and I didn't have a lot of time to prep pictures and such. Wednesday was spent driving from Jackson WY to Reno NV and I had lots of time to organize pictures while we drove.

Here's some pics from Monday:
- The ride into the park was a bit different without snow.

Once we got in the park we still had to go through a pass that had a bunch of snow left.

We stopped at Fishing Bridge and looked around. It was cold enough that we had our warm weather gear on.


A stop by one of Yellowstones thermal areas was interesting in more ways than one. Not only did we get to see some unique thermal mud pots, but we had to contend with Bison blocking the trail.

Putting up with a bit of cold weather was worth it to see sights like this:

A full day in Yellowstone

We managed to spend a full day in Yellowstone National Park today. The overnight weather was cold, but there was not much precipitation so the East entrance of the park was open. We were told there was one road that was still closed inside the park, but by the end of the day that road was open as well. Because we lost a day that was planned for Yellowstone, we had to try a little harder to see more of the sights. We worked our way from the East entrance to the North Entrance, visiting the Canyon Village and Falls, the Norris Geyser Basin, and several smaller features of the park. The weather was a bit chilly and the snow/rain was a bit annoying at times, but overall we had a great day. It seemed to me that my cameras had magical powers to make it rain. Every time I turned on a camera to take some pictures, it started to rain. grrrr....

We spotted a lot of Bison wandering around the park and even had a few close encounters. One of the sites we visited had a boardwalk around a bunch of different mudpots and at one point we had to wait for a Bison to cross the boardwalk before we could proceed. The Bison certainly didn't seem to mind us there, but we tried not to get to close just on general principles.

The girls seemed to have a bit of difficulty fully appreciating the sights they were seeing. I think the cold weather didn't help, but at times I had to convince them it was worth it to get out of the car and walk around a bit. I'm hoping if the weather improves they'll get more excited about exploring the natural wonders around us.

I took a bunch of pictures, but it's late and I don't feel like working through them to post a bunch of them. I'll just leave you with this one of the Lower Canyon Falls:

Oh Yeah! I can gloat about one thing...

For those of you in Michigan laughing about the weather we're having on our trip - At least I can make you feel bad about paying the highest price in the nation for gasoline! We're paying at least $0.30 / gal. less for gas out here. The cheapest we've paid so far is $2.39 / gal.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!