Yosemite Video : Part 3

Yosemite National Park - Waterfalls & Mirror Lake from Christopher Chan.

Just when you thought you've seen the last of our Yosemite trip, here's the final part of our video series. This video features Yosemite Fall, Bridalveil Fall and Ribbon Fall.

If you want to watch this video in full HD quality, you should watch the video directly on the Vimeo website. This does require a fast Internet connection.

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Yosemite Video : Part 2

Yosemite National Park - Yosemite Valley from Christopher Chan.

Part 2 of a series of videos shot during our recent trip to the Yosemite National Park using Yvonne's fancy digital camera that takes HD video. This part features various scenes around Yosemite Valley including El Capitan, Half Dome, Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Rocks.

If you want to watch this video in full HD quality, you should watch the video directly on the Vimeo website. This does require a fast Internet connection.

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Yosemite Weekend Part 3

On the third and last day of our weekend in Yosemite, we decided to have an early start in the Valley so that we can leave earlier and beat the exit traffic. Our kind hosts packed a nice breakfast for us to take on the road and we left our comfortable B&B inn behind and to head, once again, back in Yosemite Valley on a cold -7C morning.

We weren't planning on any strenuous hikes this morning, instead we drove around the Valley again and stopping at every possible lookout point. We've seen the valley on a cloudy day and a sunny day but yet again, the valley looked different today under different light as we were here a few hours earlier than yesterday.

One of the most amazing views, if not the best view of the entire trip, that we came across this morning was Valley View (see below). The panoramic view included the famous El Capitan (on the left) and Bridalveil Falls (on the right). Surprisingly, it wasn't at all crowded when we got there though a tour bus did show up about 15 minutes after we got there.



Very reluctantly, we left the Valley after visiting all the lookout spots and headed towards Mariposa Grove, near the entrance of the park. Mariposa Grove contains the largest grove of Giant Sequoia trees, including two of the largest sequoias in the world. We didn't spend too long there though the trees were very impressive. Strangely, many parts of the grove appear to be have been burnt out, not sure if this was a planned burning or a wildfire.


From Mariposa Grove, we said our final goodbyes to the wonderful Yosemite National Park and headed back to San Jose.
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Yosemite Weekend Part 2

We had originally planned on getting up early and making an early start to go back to Yosemite. But after the long and tiring first day, we decided to sleep in a bit on our second day and to only venture into Yosemite after enjoying a nice breakfast that came with our stay at the Big Creek Inn.

And the breakfast spread certainly did not disappoint. Our hosts, John and Pamela, provided a nice breakfast buffet that consisted of fresh fruits, bread, bagels and cereal. They also chatted with us throughout breakfast. The inn had three rooms and was fully booked that weekend that we were there. But we were the first couple to up for breakfast (and we were also the last couple to return to the inn the night before) so it looked like we were making the most of our visit.

After breakfast, we drove back to Yosemite Valley. While the inn was only a very short distance to the southern entrance of the National Park, it was still a 30 minute drive from the park entrance to the valley itself. This drive was a marked contrast to our first drive to the valley yesterday. Instead of a overcast, rainy and cold day, we had a beautiful sunny and cloudless blue sky day. Everything seemed so different under these much more favourable conditions.

We noticed that the snow fall from the previous night was still on the ground at certain parts of the drive into the valley. We drove around the valley and stopped at various photo and look out points to take photos of the neverending beauty of this valley. The valley itself is not very big but there were many stops.

Some of the landmarks we stopped by to admire and photograph on this morning were Cathedral Rocks, El Capitan, Bridalveil Falls and Yosemite Falls. There are thousands of waterfalls in the national park and you cannot get enough of the magnificence of the display of seeing gallons of water cascading off rocky cliffs.

After photographing the falls from a distance, we eventually parked the car near Sentinel Bridge which was a central location to many of the attractions in the valley and we decided to walk around for the rest of the day. We stopped for a brief lunch at the Yosemite Village (burgers) before exploring the valley on foot.

From Yosemite Village, we walked to the Lower Yosemite Falls (see below). As we entered the region near the falls, it was noticeably colder and there were a lot of unmelted snow lining the various creeks that flowed from the falls. The Lower Falls were flowing at full volume and we decided to put on our ponchos for some weather protection after the soaking we received the previous day when we visited the Bridalveil Falls. But of the hundreds of people at the falls, we were the only ones wearing ponchos. After a while, we decided to take ours off so as not to stick out like sore thumbs.



Photographing around the Lower Falls (see below) was challenging because of the strong spray coming from the falls and from the crowd that was at the falls. Yvonne remembered her previous to the same falls five years ago during summer and the falls were all but a small trickle. What a huge difference a different season makes !



From the Lower Falls, we walked back out towards the valley and we walked across the Sentinel Meadows where we were treated to a beautiful view of Half Dome. On the other side of the meadows were the Cathedral Rocks with a picturesque chapel in their shadow. We finished our walk around the valley at Sentinel Bridge where photographers typically gathered to photograph the Half Dome during sunset.

Unfortunately, by late afternoon, a lot of clouds rolled in and our blue sky day was no more. After waiting for half an hour at Sentinel Bridge, we decided that today's sunset was not going to much of a sunset after all and we packed up and headed by to the car. As we drove towards Curry Village for dinner, we passed by a meadow with a beautiful panoramic view of Half Dome and North Dome and we pulled over for another photo opportunity (see below).



After the last shots of the day, we had dinner at Curry Village. The buffet dinner was surprisingly cheap and it wasn't too bad. After dinner, we drove back to the inn. At the inn, we decided to layer up on warm clothing and we headed out to see the stars from the balcony. And what an amazing sight it was. We stayed out there for 20 minutes or so but we had to retreat to our room as it was getting way too cold outside despite our many layers of clothing. Thus, ended another amazing day at Yosemite.
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Yosemite Video : Part 1

Yosemite National Park - Tunnel View & Bridalveil Falls from Christopher Chan.

This short video is part of a series of videos shot during our recent trip to the Yosemite National Park using Yvonne's fancy digital camera that takes HD video. Part 1 features scenes of the famous Tunnel View and Bridalveil Falls. El Capitan and Half Dome make cameo appearances.

If you want to watch this video in full HD quality, you should watch the video directly on the Vimeo website.

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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
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