I'm off again!

ranoodle31
Mar 31, 2018
4 min read

As I turn the big 38 today, I am off to do some more traveling.

I had a job that I could have taken but they were not paying enough to cover my expenses and as a consultant that is a no go. :(

Anyhoo, I had hemmed and hawed about going out to Yosemite National Park. I was out in Cali working for a reason, to NOT be in the snow. I had seen a coworker’s pictures of her weekend trip to Yosemite and it looked so beautiful in the snow, so I figured what the hell. I packed up my winter gear and took a long as drive out to the park. I say it was a long ass drive because I turned off my GPS since there were so many signs about getting to the park, I thought I was good to go. Finally as I was driving up some random steep highway I thought to myself, where in the heck am I???? So I found my location on my GPS (barely) and what!!!! I was over an hour out of my way. I had missed a turn somewhere, who knows where and was heading to the North part of the Yosemite National Park, which didn’t have the biggest items I wanted to see. Now, I was pissed!!!! So I turned around and sucked it up. But then something else occurred to me, I didn’t pack my hiking boots! So far, Road Trip 2 – Renee 0

I finally get back on track and make it into the park. I went to Yosemite Valley where they had a few campgrounds, some lodging and of course tons of trails and plenty of places to park where you could go and see the sights. I drove around the circle about 3 times before I figured out where I wanted to get some night shots of, since of course I had arrived fairly late in the day, hikes were out of the question. I also found a place that allowed parking over night, there were no signs that indicated you couldn’t park and sleep there. SCORE! Road Trip 2 – Renee 1. I settled in and brought out my cooking gear to make myself some dinner and then go out and take some night shots of the sky. This is a skill I have yet to really figure out so most of the pictures are blurry and have too much “noise” associated with them.

After taking what I thought were good pictures at the moment (insert a big lol here) I decided to hunker down for the night. I heard cars driving by and didn’t think too much of it, until one car came up behind where I was parked and had a light shining on me. Park Patrol!!!! Phew…they were just checking to make sure I knew where I was and that I wasn’t lost looking for a campground or lodging. I guess loads of people get lost and just say F It!, and sleep in their cars. Ummmm no way, if I am going to sleep in a car I am going to have some sort of a bed lol.

So morning comes and I have a decision to make. Wear my winter boots which are huge and clunky to go do some walks in or go home since all I had was flip flops. Come on!!! I left sunny and 75 Pleasanton Cali, I wasn’t thinking sneakers. Lol

I decided to put on the clunky ass boots and go do some walks. I walked out to Mirror Lake, which was more like Mirror puddles with sand bars between them. I still got some good pictures but the sign is definitely deceiving lol. In talking to people later on they say in the summer it pretty much dries up. So maybe we need to rename this place??? Lol

I drove around the valley multiple times during my trip here. You can see the falls from quite a ways a way and in multiple places in the park. They are amazing! Yet, the one thing I kept missing in my driving around in circles (because it was fairly dark) was that there is WAY more to the falls than what you see at the top of the tree line! Now this was impressive! When I first saw the main part of the falls I thought…..ok cool I like waterfalls, but then when you walk to the bottom of it you are in complete awe, and if you aren’t well then you need to get yourself checked out ASAP! Lol I decided to do the basic walk to the lower falls to check them out and then do the walk via woods which would ultimately bring me back to the where I started. It was a nice walk, and I actually found some SNOW lol albeit it was icy snow in the river lol

Anyhoo, I drove around and really wanted to get a picture of El Captain, but couldn’t quite figure out how to. This is mainly cause I was having a really dur moment. I see something out in this field and am like “why in the hell is that dude out there in the field laying down?” Then light dawns on marble head! When you get out into the field you can see El Captain! I have never said I am the brightest bulb on the tree! Lol So I went and got some pictures of this monstrosity.

After this, I figured it was time to go back to my apartment where I was staying. I didn’t really want to but my feet and legs hurt from the damn winter boots and NO SNOW in Yosemite and I couldn’t do any real hikes without my hiking boots or even better sneakers lol Yes Yes Yes I learned a lesson lol.

So in total, I spent 8-9 hours of driving due to my little detour and the rest of the time in the park. I don’t regret not being able to see as much as I could have since I am lucky to be where I am in the first place, not everyone gets to experience the things I do