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Saturday 10 - Monday 12 May 2008
Early Saturday morning we decided to take a detour to visit Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Park is home to the Sequoia trees, which are only found here (between 5000-7000ft) and are the largest trees in the world (not the tallest or widest, but overall largest volume). This is also the time we entered bear territory. There were lots of photos of cars with doors ripped open by hungry bears, so Sean and I started getting a little concerned for the safety of our blue Prius at this point.
The drive up into the mountains was very windy and narrow in places, but the viewpoints (or overlooks as they are called here) were magnificent. We stopped off at the visitor centre, which was actually above the snow line (we were in shorts) and also walked up a few hundred stairs to the top of Moro Rock, which had incredible views over the snow peaks and valleys. We also visited the General Sherman, the largest tree in the world.
The detour meant we didn’t arrive in Yosemite National Park until early evening. We had planned on camping but
as we passed through the gates saw a sign indicating that all campgrounds were full (it was a Saturday night). So we drove alongside the Merced River, to the town of Mariposa, which is outside of the Park and after a few knockbacks found ourselves a night at an inn. The upside of not being able to camp is that we had a delicious dinner at a restaurant called Savoury (chicken and black bean soup and New York steak with vegies).
On arrival in Yosemite on Sunday morning we went straight to Camp 4 and spoke to the ranger to get ourselves a site. Camp 4 is a base for lots of rockclimbers, so the place was cram packed with tents. We shared our campsite with three guys from Vermont, who started a great fire in the evening. Fortunately, the ranger explained to us that bears would generally stay away from humans and humans with food, but if the food was unattended then it was up for grabs. We had to remove absolutely everything with an odour from the car and store it into these big bear proof containers (think toiletries, food, makeup - even lipstick apparently).
The
highlight of our visit to Yosemite was the hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls (among the tallest falls in the world). It was about 7km to the top and was pretty tough going (especially on the way down) because of lots of slippery granite, dirt and mud. Again, we were viewing the Falls at the best time of year, because snow was melting from the peaks. There were photos showing them in Summer with barely a trickle and again in Winter all snowed-in. The view from the top of the falls was great. We walked right out onto a rock ledge (with a railing) and looked over the edge of the falls all the way down to the valley floor. The spray and updraft from the falls made it a wet and cold position, so we moved further back and sat on the rocks for a while before starting the descent.
Getting into the swing of camping, we were up early on Monday morning to dismantle the tent, eat breakfast and hit the road for San Francisco.
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