The decision was made last night to deviate from our route home. Had we decided to try to make Bakersfield, we’d be home on Sunday by about 2:00 p.m., so let’s go somewhere else and use our time doing other stuff. With that, we looked at the map and drove to Jamestown, California. By 8:00 this morning, we were in Yosemite National Park for our second visit since we came through with my mother-in-law Jutta on our first visit back in the 20th century.
A beautiful start to the day with the weather on our side. Our point-and-shoot Sony Cyber-Shot is not capable of taking a photo of El Capitan at this range and getting it all in the frame, so we took three portrait images and stitched them together in Photoshop for the image you are looking at. You might see some smudging and focus differences if you look closely, such is the problem of the lenses and automatic shooting that accompanies digital cameras. At least we’re no longer shooting 1MP images.
Maybe it’s because we are here so early, or maybe in April, not as many people are on vacation, but this visit is shaping up to be much better than our previous encounter, where throngs of people were choking off the environment and creating a noise that made visiting a bit of a bummer.
Serenity should be experienced just like this.
It’s been nice moving through Yosemite Valley at a reasonable pace without feeling pressured to try to avoid heavy crowds. I can only imagine what people like Ansel Adams and John Muir found in these locations far removed from busy cities and not easily accessible back during their early explorations. I’m a bit melancholic with this idea that our National Parks can only get busier, more littered, and harmed as time goes on. Sadly, there is no season pass for entry where someone has to prove their trustworthiness when visiting these treasures.
How does one ever tire of gazing upon waterfalls?
Beaches, tide pools, sea life, a great movie, expansive nature, and a beautiful wife who loves being out here as much as I do. I am lucky.
Not a cloud in the sky nor a care in the world.
Always remember to turn over rocks, look on the underside of things, and be certain to see what others might have missed because it’s not just the extravagant landscapes that hold oodles of amazement, but it is often in the cracks and crevices that we can find things never seen before.
After nearly five hours here in Yosemite we have to take our leave. Five hours after that, we stopped in Valencia, California for dinner with our old friend Mark Shimer, and then at 7:30 p.m., we were back on the road for what will now be a late night. We made it to Starbucks in Banning three minutes before they closed and hit Blythe just before 11:00 p.m. with about 150 miles to go. All this to see a movie? Absolutely. While some people thought we were crazy for driving 1,500 miles to see a cartoon, they can easily sit on a couch watching TV for 10 hours on Saturday – who’s crazy?