Yosemite Weekend

Chris and I spent 3 days and 2 nights at Yosemite on April 24 ~ 26. The weather was predicted to be rainy the whole weekend so we were a bit disappointed as we had planned on taking lots of photos and doing lots of hikes. Luckily, as our trip neared, the forecast predicted it to be sunny on Saturday and Sunday so we were ecstatic! Chris' plans of capturing sunset photos in Yosemite were possible again! :) But it was going to be -7C to 12C over the weekend. Brrrr. We made sure we brought many layers of clothing, scarves and our mittens.

We left early Friday morning around 8am and arrived at our Bed & Breakfast around 11:30am. Unfortunately, the B&B wasn't available for check-in until 3pm so we drove directly into the Yosemite Valley, which was another 30 minutes from the Yosemite National Park gates. We encountered a dreary, drizzling, colorless day but we made the most of it. We stopped at the Tunnel View which had a magnificent view of the Valley, and then onto Bridalveil Falls, which was at its fullest at this time of the year, because of all the snow that's melted. The path to the bottom of Bridalveil Fall was very wet and you could see streams of water flowing down the walkway. Needless to say, we didn't want to get ourselves any wetter, especially with our camera equipment, so we took pictures of the flowing rapids and of the fall from a distance.

We continued our leisurely drive along the Yosemite Valley and was greeted with the grandeur of El Capitan, one of the world's largest granite rock formations. We could see trickles of waterfalls all along the granite walls and as we drove along, we saw the picturesque view of the Yosemite Falls, which is the sixth largest waterfall in the world. We felt compelled to stop at every stop to take photos, as you can see from our photo slideshow below.



Photo Gallery | Chris' Yosemite Photos

Chris had wanted to take sunrise photos of Mirror Lake so we decided that we check out the moderate hike so we would know the way the next day. So we walked on the path towards Mirror Lake, stopped to take photos of the river rapids, walked, stop, photos, walk, etc...you get the picture. ;) As we walked along, we saw a sign that clearly indicated 1 mile to Mirror Lake but after a long while, we felt we had walked an awfully long 1 mile, so we started to wonder if we were going the wrong way. Luckily, we saw some people walking towards us and we asked them where Mirror Lake was. They told us it was 20 minutes back! So we double backed and felt foolish to have completely missed the scenery we had set out to see. (Must have been all that walk, stop, photo taking routine...;P) Oh, and we also experienced some tiny pellets of hail on the way - very unpredictable weather that day. When we got to the Lake, we realized the sky was clearing and there were finally blue skies peaking out from underneath the clouds! You can imagine our excitement as we discovered we were able to see what Mirror Lake was named for. We saw an exact mirror image of the granite rocks, the fog, blue skies and trees against the lake. It was beautiful! Although we walked for an additional mile or two, we felt that it was such great timing. If we hadn't missed Mirror Lake the first time, we would have taken a few disappointing shots of the Lake and probably gone elsewhere. We would not have been able to capture the beauty of Mirror Lake. From Mirror Lake, we then raced to the Tunnel View again so that we could capture the sunset against the Yosemite Valley. We used my old camera to do a timelapse of the sunset and it was truly an amazing sight to see the sun slowing lighting up the meadow and the Bridalveil Fall and then slowly darkening the valley.

Wow, what a long blog post already and it's only the first day. Okay, I'll just end this post by saying that we tired ourselves out that first day. While driving out of the park, we realized there was snow on the side of the road which we had not seen earlier that day! Which meant, we experienced all the weather elements of fog, rain, hail, snow and sunshine, all in one day! We finally got to the B&B and was met with a very friendly inn keeper. The B&B was full of amenities and our room was also newly renovated! We really enjoyed the cozy accommodation after a long tiring day out. We realized we could see a gazillion stars outside but we were too cold and tired to gaze at them that night so we called it a night. Zzzzzzzz