After staying in Mammoth Lakes for half a day – in which we absolutely didn’t do anything except resting and enjoying free Wi-Fi 😀 – in the Motel 6 Hotel, we left the next day to go to Yosemite.
Before entering the Yosemite National Park, we made a small detour to Mono Lake, a salt lake in between the Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains. There are a few parking lots from where you can visit the salty lake and the tufa’s. I think we stopped near the South Tufa parking lot. Here we had the best view over the lake and the tufa’s. There’s a path in between the tufa’s that goes from the parking lot to the lake and back. We arrived here early in the morning and were practically alone, so that’s a big plus! After enjoying Mono Lake we went further towards Bodie, a ghost town that arose during the Gold Rush. You have to pay a few dollars to enter the park and if you pay one or two dollars extra, you get a little booklet with a guided walk trail inside the ghost town. It’s not a necessity to buy this little book to walk around Bodie, because you mostly get to know the families who lived in this or that house :-). It is a rather big Ghost Town and I think we did spend more than an hour walking around here.
After Mono Lake and Bodie we took the Tioga Pass to enter Yosemite National Park. On our first half day inside the park we went to the Tuolumne Meadows and Olmsted Point. The Tuolumne Meadows are meadows along the Tuolumne River at the east side of the park. Olmsted Point gives you a beautiful view over the Tenaya Cayon, the Half Dome and Tenaya Lake, along the Tioga pass. In the Tuolumne Meadows we did a small and easy hike, the ‘Soda Springs and Parsons Lodge’-hike. It’s a 1.5 miles round-trip that passes the Parsons Lodge which is a memorial to Edward Taylor Parsons and the Soda Springs Cabin.
Before going to our tent of the night (Oh yes we did 😆! ) we passed by Tuolumne Grove and walked the Tuolumne Grove Nature Trail. Mariposa Grove was still closed due to renovation works, so Tuolumne Grove (or the Merced Grove Trail) was the place to be to see the Giant Sequoias. The Tuolumne Grove Nature Trail is an easy 2.5 miles round-trip with a big elevation gain on the return trip. You pass by a few Giant Sequoias, including 2 that fell over. Here you also pass by the famous giant tree with the portal in it.
We slept in the Evergreen Lodge. We booked one of the tents (which included two amazing good sleeping matrasses, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a blanket, a little terrace in front of the tent and an old fashioned lantarn. We absolutely adored this place! They had a very good restaurant, a swimming pool, activities in the evening, a bar, … and in the evening between 7.30 PM and 9 PM you could make S’mores (= Graham crackers with melted marshmallows and chocolate). Our first evening we were rather scared because at one point in the night we heard some noise. We both thought it was a bear with cubs (and we both dreamed of this supposed bear with cubs) but in the end it turned out to be two guys who were synchronically snoring… Scary night in which we didn’t sleep very well. But this place is definitely a recommendation! You can also book a lodge here 😉.
The next day we left early enough to have enough to walk a few hikes. We drove towards the Yosemite Valley, saw some mule deer (again… ;-)) and were ready for a day full of hiking. We started with the easy 0.5 mile round-trip to the Bridalveil. A warm-up for what was to come… Apparently this is the first waterfall you’ll see when entering Yosemite Valley, and for us it definitely was ;-). After our little stop to admire the Bridalveil Fall, we stopped at Tunnel View (or before our hike, I can’t remember, there was a one-way loop for cars), a scenic overlook. We didn’t choose the best time, because the sun blocked any good pictures we wanted to take :-). From this point you can see El Capitán and the Bridalveil Fall.
After that it was time for the big works… we decided to hike towards the Vernal Fall and the Nevada Fall via The Mist Trail and back via a part of The John Muir Trail. You can decide to stop at a few points and return from there: you can walk towards the first bridge which gives you a look over the Vernal Fall from the ground and you can only hike the moderate Mist Trail, a 3 miles round trip to the Vernal Fall. But we decided to take on the challenge and do the strenuous 5.8 miles round-trip to the top of the Nevada Fall. We hiked the trail in about 6 hours, which is what’s to be expected (5-6 hrs). We didn’t had much of a choice though, because I refused to take the same way back down 😊. Way too dangerous in my opinion, with wet stones from the fall, and too much people that were going up to the Vernal Fall. So, there was only one choice left: going further up.
The path isn’t the easiest to take, with a few big rocky paths to climb your way up. The John Muir Trail back down is a lot easier and safer, so if you can choose, go up via the Vernal Fall and The Mist Trail and back down via the John Muir Trail. But… it was a small personal victory to climb all the way up 😊. Yay for me 🤗!
After our strenuous hike to the Vernal and Nevada Fall we didn’t want to move anymore and just go back to our tent… but I did still wanted to see the Lower and Upper Yosemite Falls. So we parked our car again and walked towards the Lower Fall, from where we could also have a view over the Upper Yosemite Fall. After that we thought we did our best to see most of Yosemite National Park and went back to Mather 😊.
Around the world in a lifetime 