2020 Road Trip, Part 1: Yosemite Valley
It’s been a few years of hoping to go back to Yosemite and take Mia there for the first time. The pandemic has sucked for a million reasons. Sigh…it has been really bad. It feels guilty to be in a position to even talk about silver linings, however I think it’s important to enjoy them if they exist. Yosemite shutdown during the shutdown, then it opened strategically by reservation-only.
So early in the morning on September 1st I was able to reserve a date to arrive for any day in October. I chose October 10th. Why? It’s a Saturday..yeah.. but it was also supposed to be our wedding day (before Covid). It’s fall, off-season, could have interesting weather for photos, etc etc.
Turns out in September the entire state became on fire and especially the Sierra Nevadas, which carried into our trip. Hey, with everything else going wrong in the world and that could go wrong nowadays, a little smoke was the least of our worries. My concerns were things like if I sufficiently wiped my hands and the gas station pump enough with clorox wipes before getting back in my car, some clean (compared to LA) mountain- fire smoke was something I could endure. Luckily for us, the smoke situation and AQI actually improved each day we were in Yosemite, and assisted in making some purple-red sunset lighting.
We arrived around 4pm on Saturday to check in to the park, cruised the valley loop, hiked around mirror lake, and I was excited to see Mias reaction to the awe of it all throughout the afternoon. We stopped at tunnel view lookout for sunset and for about 5 minutes the smokey sky glowed bright pink and it was a great start to the trip.
We stayed at an airbnb in Bootjack/Oakhurst about a 1-hour drive from the hwy 140 entrance. Each night we had oven bake pizzas or easy pasta, packed sandwiches, snacks and a few beers as picnic supplies for the park, and basically made spontaneous and stress-free decisions for exploring the park for 3 days.
The second day we did a hike up the Mist trail around Vernal and Nevada fall, then down the John Muir Trail. Almost 10 miles, 2,600 ft elevation and about 4 hours, all with striking views and almost nobody on the trail (past Vernal fall). We got back as the sun went behind the valley walls and stopped by a well-known Merced river photo spot for sunset.
Day 3 will be another post.
