We arrived in Yosemite in the sunshine with the weather still chilly enough to need our sweatshirts. The great part about visiting Yosemite in early March is that the teaming hoards of tourists haven’t quite gotten there yet, and so we got to experience a much more subdued atmosphere in the park during our 3 day visit. Again not having reservations, we stopped in at the ranger station and managed to score a spot for one night. The rest of the day was spent walking through the village, checking out the hikes that we might want to accomplish while here and just taking in the magic of the mountains that surrounded us. In particular, I was interested in seeing Half Dome, where our daughter, Annie, had hiked last year. Of course, our view was from the bottom and we never managed to get up to where she would have been, but even so, imagining my child way up there just took my breath away – yikes!
The following day, having decided we needed 2 more nights, we first checked in at the ranger station to get that squared away. I’m pretty sure we would have been out of luck in a few weeks (well, any other year that is – now with Covid, who knows?). Our camping spot settled, we headed out to hike up the Mist Trail. This would lead us up along a pathway, fairly steep in places, to Vernal Fall. We enjoyed the walk and the chance to stretch our legs while taking in the most amazing views. We stopped short of the falls, as it was getting pretty steep, but all in all, we loved our 3 km round trip.
After this fairly strenuous (for us) hike, we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon exploring around the park and taking in more views. There is just no end of places where you can take the most amazing pictures here in Yosemite! We also checked out the Ansel Adams Gallery, admiring his photography and his stamina – taking pics in Yosemite at all times of the year. I can see where the fascination came from – this place is just magical.
Our last hiking morning was spent out at Mirror Lake. There is a shuttle bus that runs around the park and you can hop on and off to get to different trail heads which keeps the number of cars driving around the park to a minimum. We grabbed the shuttle and enjoyed chatting with the friendly driver before getting out and making our way around Mirror Lake – about 5 km altogether, but pretty flat so not challenging at all but oh so pretty. Of course, the main objective was to get to the lake and take so many pictures of the mountains and trees reflected there. It was such a special place and even at this early date one of the more crowded places we came to in the park. I can’t imagine in the height of the summer season getting any pics without people in them. We were pretty lucky though, and the folks we encountered were all friendly and thoughtful of others’ attempts at getting that “perfect shot”.
Later in the day we made our way to the bottom of Yosemite Falls where we climbed on some huge boulders to enjoy a great view of the falls. We saw a young couple climb way up to the top but that’s not our kind of adventure.
Our magical stay at Yosemite came to its end and we knew we had to hurry to get back to Canada, hearing that the borders would soon be closing and knowing that Covid was spreading quickly in all of the states we had to drive through. California was closing down as were both Oregon and Washington. We made the mad dash back to BC in a few days, stopping only briefly to go for a quick walk through our treasured Redwoods at Elk Creek Park. Our last overnight in the States was at a friend’s house in Portland. From there we booked it right through Washington State, arriving at the ghostly quiet border crossing to be told we needed to go home and quarantine for 14 days (which we knew would be the case). Of course, getting home meant a ferry ride, but we stayed in the van, arriving at our home in Nanaimo late in the day. Our adventure was over and we were unsure about when we would be able to venture out again.
It has been wonderful over the past few months to relive this last adventure. As the restrictions are being lifted very carefully and slowly here in BC, we are heading out for a month long tour of our home province so I’ll be offline for a bit. Thanks for coming along on our adventures and we will be back soon!
