By Jason
First off, thanks for all the baby name votes – follow this link to my blog to see some of the results. Second, a disclaimer – this is yet another photo-heavy travelog post from Jason. I know that it seems like all Ann and I do is take trips, but the fact is we only write about the interesting stuff. It’s hard to create awhole post about running errands and catching up on laundry.
We had some folks in town from the Dublin office and they wanted to see Yosemite, so we took a quick trip last weekend to do some hiking and camping. Ann promised not to have the baby that weekend and told me to go, she’s basically the best wife ever.
Because of bad Bay Area traffic we didn’t get out to the park until after dark. We stayed the first night at Housekeeping Camp, which is somewhere between tent camping and staying in cabins. We ended up stuffing eight people into one “cabin” (really three concrete walls and a tent roof) that should really only fit five. But we did take a quick night hike down to a footbridge over the Merced River, where I was able to play with my new camera’s long exposures:
The first stop was Vernal Falls. In the spring this waterfall overflows and causes mist to drift down the valley, but in the late summer it’s a lot more reserved. You can see a bit of the rainbow at the bottom in the picture below.
Here we are at the top of Vernal Falls. Since we got a bit of a later start, this was a good point to stop for lunch. We introduced Alvar, Iban and Juliane to two great American traditional foods: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and beef jerky.
Right above the falls is a broad area where the water flows over the bare granite, creating a natural waterslide. In the spring it’s pretty dangerous but the river was so dry that it was only an inch or so deep.
Here is the view of Nevada Falls on the way up the trail. This was a pretty nice hike, I would recommend it to anyone is decent shape (except Ann, at least not for a month or so yet). There’s a lot of uphill hiking and switchbacks, but it’s not so relentless as the hike up to Yosemite Falls.
Here’s the view from the top of Nevada Falls – it’s really spectacular, definitely worth the walk. This is about the halfway point for the trail to climb Half Dome. I think next year we’ll get some people together and do the whole thing.
Here’s Mark, the new guy at work, taking a look down to the valley floor.
We decided to take the John Muir trail back, along the other side of the valley. You can just barely see Nevada Falls on the right.
Here’s a view of Liberty Cap and Mt. Broderick with Nevada Falls at the bottom right.
We stayed the second night at Curry Village, which I would recommend to just about anyone. It’s not as posh as the yurts we stayed in on my first trip, but the tent-cabins are really nice and the bathrooms are clean with private shower stalls. The only drawback is that you can’t have a campfire – the cabins are way too close together.
The next day we took a drive up to Glacier Point, which provides a panoramic view of the Yosemite Valley and mountains. Here I am with Half Dome in the background. I made sure to arrange the camera angle to make myself look like some kind of crazy daredevil, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as it looks.
Here’s a more straightforward pose at the top of Glacier point:
That’s it for now. I have a truly ridiculous number of photos in Flickr, with lots of landscapes and nature shots if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve also made some large-scale panoramic photos that I’ll put up soon too.
Edit: Reid brought along his GPS so he could generate a trip report. Here’s a graph of our hike, you can see the full data at Motionbased.
