(8) My Trip to Yosemite National Park, CA

If you want to see America, you have no choice but rent a car - the automobile is an American invention, after all. Paradoxically, I am going to travel through the West in a Japanese car - not a Ford, but a Mazda; the vehicle is not very suitable for driving in canyons, either, but we're giving it the benefit of the doubt. It is quite new (only 11,000 miles on the clock), spacious and comfortable. Later it turns out to be quite economical as well.
Finally, on Thursday, August 7 I'm leaving San Francisco and heading for Yosemite National Park, situated about 330 km away from the city of winds and fog. I am bracing myself for a dramatic change of temperature, which I feel already at the first stop about 25 miles west of SF. That's what I call summer - I'm loving the heat, especially that the air inside the car is cool because I'm not the only passenger and my traveling companions prefer lower temperatures.

Now, the GPS device: it makes traveling easy and safe - there's no danger of getting lost or driving off the intended route, plus you know your timing perfectly well. However, I belong to the older (traditional?) generation of tourists, totally dependent on maps. Before leaving the city I bought myself maps of all the states that we were planning to visit and I studied them carefully during my peregrination. A funny thing those maps are - you travel through a country, look around, absorb the views, and yet it would all mean nothing without a map. I remembered a situation from Paul Auster's book in which a detective following a man around New York had to draw the route in his notebook to see where he was and decipher the meaning of it all;)
Below is a map of the Park (it grows if you click on it): we arrived along Highway 120 and spent the night in Curry Village in Yosemite Valley, centrally located between Glacier Point and Half Dome:

Yosemite is located in the High Sierra, whose landscape was shaped by glaciers. The most characteristic features of Yosemite, apart from the gigantic size of course (over 3,000 square km), are massive granite cliffs and valleys which look like canyons between huge walls. Here is one of my first pictures taken on the way to Curry Village.

The bunk is our hotel for the night. We have to be careful not to attract the attention of bears which like visiting tourists' cars and bunks, if they forget to lock the door and hide everything that resembles food. (S)

Yosemite became a national park in 1890 thanks to John Muir, who can be called a follower of America's best known environmentalist - Henry David Thoreau. Muir was younger than Thoreau and lived on the other side of the U.S. Actually, I read somewhere that Emerson himself traveled to the American West and, invited by John Muir, spent a night in the High Sierra. As the story goes, he predicted that America would soon hear about young Muir. This makes Muir another prodigy that Emerson, with his great intuition, recognized - the first and most famous being Walt Whitman, of course;) (S):

Meadows are another feature of Yosemite's landscape - they must have been formed by glacier millions of years ago:

Here's a picture taken at the feet of the most famous granite rock in Yosemite - El Capitan. Its height (910 meters) invites rock climbers and parachutists - I did not see any, but the scene was spectacular anyway;)

Driving along the route leading to the most popular vantage point in Yosemite - Glacier Point - I could admire the park's panorama and get an idea of the park's size (that's at least what I thought then;): (S)

The picture below (click on it) was taken from Glacier Point which offers breathtaking views of Yosemite. In the center is Half Dome - the most famous view in the Park. Standing there I felt I could become a follower of Transcendentalism;) (S)

Half Dome in close-up - there are people on top of the crest but you could only see them through binoculars (S).

Looking south from Glacier Point - Yosemite's waterfalls. If you click on the picture, you'll see a lake from which the water is falling. The picture shows one third of the terrace and the biggest of the three waterfalls. (S)

Here is a view from Glacier Point on Curry Village, in which I spent the previous night. Glacier Point is 980m above the village, but can you tell the distance? Not really... (S):

Coming back from Glacier Point - a wonderful view of El Capitan from a distance. (S)

Below is a picture taken from Tioga Road, which runs across the Park a bit north of the Valley and which took us to the exit from the Park. I wondered how soft the rock must be for trees to grow out of it like that. I am looking up now:

Tioga Road leads you through very diverse landscape - here is a forest whose trees grow from small rocks;)

And here is WOW! Tioga Pass Road 120 and a car (the little red thing). This gives you an idea how high the Park is in the Sierra Mountains. (S)

Below is Tioga Lake - just before the exit from the Park - a nice view for goodbye;) The water in the lake was very clear but rather cold for a swim. (S)

This is what the Park looks like from the "outside" - the flat area between me and the Park's mountains will now be a common feature of the landscape until Mount Whitney, on the way to Death Valley, which will come next.