Yosemite - July 2-3, 2001

Panning for gold at the White Wolf campground, Yosemite National Park

At Yosemite we camped in the Lone Wolf campground. It was nice, much cooler than Coloma but the dirt was more dirty. Well, Duh! I can hear you saying. Okay, stop laughing for a minute and hear me out. At Coloma, there was dirt to be sure. But it was a light brown and didn't stick to everything. At Lone Wolf, it was black and got on and stayed on everything. Also, the bugs were worse in Yosemite. But it was prettier, with the hills/mountains, trees, and creeks. And did I mention it was cooler?

Probably the best part was that I celebrated my birthday at the camp, as you can see below. We even had cake for breakfast the next morning.

Nalani eating a nutritious breakfast of birthday cake

Lone Wolf Campground was about 30 minutes from the North/West entrance, which is the one by which we entered the Park. I liked it because it had running water. There were also showers at the campground lodge. The campground also came complete with its own bear. To that end, each campsite had a metal cabinet in which you had to (HAD TO!) lock up your food each night. Even the trash containers were hard to get into. And that was just for the people!

Shayne wasn't so nice as far as putting up his daughters' tent at Yosemite; he made them put it up and take it down by themselves. For a while, they were working at opposite purposes but eventually they decided to work together.

Our campsite was actually very near to a creek, so Shayne got to continue panning for gold. Shayne has Gold Fever. At every opportunity he was out there, panning for gold no matter where we were. More power to him, although I don't think he found much. I, myself, am not much for panning for gold. It just does nothing for me. But everyone else seemed to enjoy it, and I got some good pictures of them.

On July 3 (my actual birthday), my cousin Caleb planned out our itinerary for the day. First, we drove into the heart of the park (we were out in the fringes) and stopped at a waterfall, a very small waterfall. I don't remember the name of the waterfall, but we did get some pictures there. Then we went into Yosemite village. Somehow or other, we got separated from each other there. I started it because I went shopping for souvenirs. Then everyone else went to look at the Ansel Adams art gallery. I caught up at the museum, which was pretty cool. We also visited the museum, which has some very pretty photographs and Indian relics.

After lunch in the village, we had a hike to Vernal Falls and then visited Glacier Point. I took many pictures at both places. In between, we stopped off on the side of the road to try and see the climbers at El Capitan. El Capitan is this huge granite rock that rock climbing enthusiasts climb. Its face is quite sheer. Across from El Capitan is a huge meadow. Many people stop their cars and traipse into the meadow to try to see the rock climbers. We saw a few. They look like little color specs against the gray. No bigger than a pinprick. The climb, according to my cousin, takes a couple of days so the climbers actually have to camp out on the rock. They rig something like a cot to the side of the rock and sleep there. (This is not my idea of fun - I'd be worried that I'd fall out of the cot!)

From El Capitan to Glacier Point. This took about one half hour or forty minutes. Glacier Point turned out to be on our way out of the park, sort of. You actually get to Glacier Point off of a side road. From Glacier Point, you can see a lot. We could see Vernal Falls (and were able to show my Aunt just exactly where we'd been and the pond we'd swum in). You could see Half Dome (the picture above) as well as a lot of other mountains. It actually looks like the canyon to the left of Half Dome now that I see it again. I kind of like contrast between the sunlight and shadows in this picture.

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