Yosemite: Day 2

We spent the second day in Yosemite in the valley, seeing the mountains from down below. My dad went camping in Yosemite with his family a lot when he was growing up, we saw Camp Curry where they camped. Camp Curry is also where you could watch the firefall back in the day- burning debris was pushed off of Glacier Point creating a waterfall of fire.

They pushed the fire off Glacier Point:

We parked and caught the bus that stopped at all the different places in the valley, there were a lot of tourists (a lot from Europe) so parking was scarce for us to hop from place to place ourselves. We saw the nature center and the visitor center. I wandered through the Ansel Adams Gallery, which was basically a gift shop devoted to Ansel Adams. I bought some cards that had Yosemite images that I liked but hadn’t really seen before, maybe one day I’ll frame them. Ansel Adams is practically synonymous with Yosemite! It was neat to see the locations in his photos for myself and recognize where they were taken.

I liked this photo of him taking pictures back in the day:

The visitor center had this statue of John Muir, who did a lot for Yosemite and environmentalism in general.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. “ –John Muir

I also liked seeing these old photos of the park:

The visitor center had this section of sequoia that had fallen in the early 1900’s, it was over 1000 years old and was alive during the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Magna Carta in 1215. Isn’t that incredible?

We ended the day by walking out to Yosemite Falls. A lot of times it is dried up in August, but it still had water this year. It was really pretty, too bad all my up close pics have tourists in them. I liked my pics taken from further away that show the upper and lower falls. I also liked the trees that were growing in the rocks in the stream.

We made it back to the car for a late lunch, we were parked near Yosemite Falls and could also walk and see the sun setting on Half Dome. There was an artist depicting Half Dome with pastels, that was fun to see.

All throughout both days Mom or I found ourselves taking pictures for other tourists, it was kinda funny how often we found ourselves doing that. We had some nice people take our picture too. Also, I had to wonder how many people’s pictures have me in the background? Ever wonder whose photo albums you’re in?