Sequoiadendron giganteum

I’ve been to San Francisco many times, I back-packed around the US years ago on the Greyhound buses and went to many national parks in the US, but I’ve never been to Yosemite. Until last Sunday that is. People who live in San Francisco looked at me as though I was a bit mad to be doing a day trip to Yosemite – and to be fair I was a bit concerned at a 14 hour day trip myself, but it was the only day I had free so it had to be better than nothing, right? Absolutely right, this day was awesome, even the long hours in the minivan with 13 other people. It’s a really early start for me – I usually try to pretend 7am Sunday morning doesn’t exist. By the time I arrived back at 9:30 pm I was a very tired and very happy traveler.

The trip to Yosemite was broken up by a caffeine stop once we got out of the urban environment, a further stop in the Central Valley to stock up on all the fresh organic produce and sandwiches for lunch, the driver’s very eclectic music collection – and then we were at the park. First stop was just inside the park for a hike into Tuolumne Grove – a stand of the gigantic, stunning Sequoia’s. We could feel their velvety trunks, pose inside the old burnt out one which had a road go through it for years, crawl through the inside of a huge old one that had fallen over, get a crick in our necks peering up to the top of them –it is a veritable nature’s playground. We also had our picnic lunch, which gave us the energy we needed to hike back up the relentless path in the relentless 97 degree sunshine – but it was worth it. Make certain to check the weather forecast before you go to Yosemite, any time of the year – I assumed if anything it would be cooler than San Francisco because it is in the mountains. Wrong! – it was 20 degrees hotter, and I’m wearing dark denim jeans – ouch!. And in the middle of winter Yosemite is covered in snow – so check the forecast before you go!

The stunning Yosemite Valley

The stunning views as we drove down into the valley, watching these iconic views that Ansel Adams captured so well. We stopped in the middle of the valley by the Visitor’s Center which is handy if you want to stock up on water, find a bathroom or maybe just some shade. And a valley it is, it made me feel like I was in Jurassic park – flat green meadows flanked by tall stands of trees surrounded by the most amazing rock faces towering over me in every direction. Yes, I am going to have to use the cliché – it was stunning. There are so many things you can do for the next few hours: shuttle buses every ten minutes that run around a loop in the valley and you can jump on and off to get to view points, trail heads or swimming holes (or campgrounds if you’re staying over). There are walking trails everywhere, flat and steep, short and long, waterfalls to see and even swim in (although they’re all dry this time of the year), beautiful swimming spots on the river, and the option I picked – a bike to rent. There are bike trails throughout the valley, they are dead flat, and on a hot day they are mainly off the roads and under the forest cover; the coolest spot to be. We went off looking for the Apple Meadow to increase our chances of spotting a bear, but given our complete inability to tell the difference between an apple tree and a pine tree we somewhat failed at this task. But we did circumnavigate the valley loop and loved every minute of it!

Black bear in the wild

Tired, sunburnt, sweaty and grinning insanely we were gathered up and plonked back into the minivan and went to have a closer look at the famous climbing mecca that is El Capitan. Unfortunately it was such a hot day there were no climbers mad enough to be up there but it was a stunning (sorry) rock face towering over us. Then we headed on the road out of the valley and as we were stopping on the side of the road one last time to look at Bridal Veil falls (more “Bridal Wisp” falls this time of the year) a black bear walked towards us from about 30 metres away. Ignoring our driver’s instruction to stay still and not approach it, we tripped over each other scrambling towards it to get the best shot, screaming loudly with excitement. The 2 – 3 year old bear very sensibly decided to exit gracefully and jumped into the river behind him, swam over to the other side of the river and paraded up and down to give us more photo ops – what a star.

Now we’d been told all day that we might see a bear, and told how we shouldn’t run away, what to do etc, but to be honest none of us believed we would actually see one. So we were now the most excited, tired, sweaty and grinning bunch of people in a minivan you could hope for, which meant we sensibly all fell asleep and woke up in time to see the San Francisco lights as we were crossing the Bay Bridge – a perfect end to a great day out.

–Vicki Potts

Planning a trip? Browse all of Viator’s Yosemite tours and things to do in San Francisco, to make the most of your visit to the City by the Bay.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under Destinations, Suggested Itineraries, USA, Canada, Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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