Trailer Trip 2014: Yosemite National Park

Hello again my faithful readers, ha. You probably thought it was all over but no chance. As I explained in the Reno to Mono post we just had no connections. But tonight we do. This is Thursday, October 30 so I'm really playing catch up. I should be able to post tomorrow about our stay in Death Valley. I'll just say one thing now then more tomorrow about it. It was incredible and possibly the high point of the trip. We loved it.

Saturday and Sunday,October 25, 26.

Today we went into Yosemite National Park. It was pretty crowded but not what it’s like in the summer. Still, it was a nice Saturday with lots of sun and warm weather and it brought a lot of people in.

We camped at the Forest Service Campground west of Lee Vining, Ca. then drove in the east entrance over Tioga Pass. Tioga Pass is at 9900 feet with an 8% grade to the National Park gate. We did not take the trailer. After passing through the gate, we stopped at a couple of pullouts then drove on into the main feature area of the park which is Yosemite Valley. There we parked in a lot and rode the shuttle bus around to all the stops. It’s also a decent tour itself.

The valley is mainly incredible scenery of white granite cliffs. Everyone has heard of and seen El Capitan and Half Dome. They do stand out but they aren’t the only ones to see. There is also the Cathedral Spires. As in all the parks there are hiking trails to take to falls and other features. We only took the short walk up to Yosemite Falls but there was no water in it. That is typical of this time of year.

It started to rain about 5:00 so we headed back to camp. The rain turned to snow about 6000 feet. Just before dark there were several cars stopped on the road for no apparent reason. Cars stopped in national parks for no “apparent” reason usually means a pretty good reason. There was a big black bear sauntering along in the woods. So, lucky us. We saw our first black bear but got no picture.

Sunday, we left our camp heading to Death Valley. I was talking to another camper who was there fishing with his sons and he said we might want to make stop at the Devil’s Post Pile. We had no idea what that was but we saw the sign directing us to it so we went. It was 15 miles off the highway and a steep climb through the city of Mammoth Lakes, a ski resort town. Then we had to drop the trailer off because of length restrictions and finally got to it. It was a really amazing thing to see. It is a geologic feature caused by volcanoes or something and it created these post-like rocks with an almost constant hexagon cross section. Some are fallen down but a lot are together like a fence. You have to see it to believe it. It was a nice little stop. Note that the Devil's post pile is not at Yosemite.