Vagabond Tales-Yosemite Valley

Aug 27-28, 2023. Yosemite National Park, Ahawahnee Hotel

Ahwahnee Hotel. This is where we stayed. They call this the front yard but you do not enter this door unless you are coming from the cottages. They are in the middle of a refurbishment as you can see by the scaffolding. The circle indicates a place we sat on several occasions, trying to get a strong enough signal to upload our Blog. Needless to say…it did not ever happen! We also ate a Häagen Dazs, ice cream bar,/chocolate, coffee, and crunchy nuts. On one of these benches! Below you will see a Yosemite squirrel.
Easy to find these guys, almost anywhere we walked. We signed something when checking into the hotel yesterday stating we understood there would be a hefty fine if we were caught feeding any of the wild life in the park!
This is what you see when you are sitting at those benches.
We took a Yosemite valley floor tour. It was great fun…
and Harry didn’t have to drive! And yes…we are sporting jackets! It was a pleasant 60° this morning but it warmed up very quickly!
Let us introduce you to, Skinner! Although we have taken many tours in our life, we think Skinner probably takes the cake for being the very best and most entertaining! She will be getting high ratings from Harry in his reviews. ( She goes by her last name!)
El Capitan in the background.
El Capitan-You must get a permit to climb El Capitan. For normal climbers it takes 3 to 5 days to make it to the top. The quickest time was set by Alex Honnold in 2017 using all safety gear in 3 hours and 56 minutes. One year later, he did speed “free solo” climbing and made it in 1 hour and 58 minutes up the 3000 ft vertical rock. You can rent his video on Amazon Prime.
This was taken by Harry at Tunnel lookout.
Many of the waterfalls are called Ephemeral. That means they only exist when the water level is high enough. Yosemite has had quite a bit of rain this year!
We took the hike to the Yosemite Falls!
We also walked to it from our hotel! A bit fewer people!
This guy was munching right beside our car and looked up just in time for his photo shoot! He was not far from our hotel!
This is a gorgeous place. We, of course , were visiting on a weekend. If you come, try to hit the week days. It was terribly crowded and very difficult to get around. Although, they do have trams, during peaks times when the park is full, you can be left waiting much longer than you would like. Monday, we could actually breathe and move around without scads of people in the way!
Celebrating 52 years of marriage with this crazy guy! It has been a true adventure and we are thankful God brought us together! Funny thing about this picture… We had set a timer and were attempting to capture the moment when a Japanese gentleman offered to take a picture of us jumping if we would take his picture with his family. So this is the picture he took. He said no jumping for his picture, but after I took his picture, his children started jumping like we had and called for Dad to take their pictures. Then another couple who was standing there, asked us to take their picture. I asked, “Will you be jumping?” The gentleman said, “No jumping…We are German.” I guess Germans don’t jump.
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6 thoughts on “Vagabond Tales-Yosemite Valley”

  1. Looks like a beautiful place. We have opted to stay longer on the Monterey Peninsula longer this trip and save Yosemite for a future trip hopefully when it is less crowded.

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    1. You might also consider biking around. Of course we didn’t have ours but I think you could get around easier! Those kelp fields are something. They are all along that peninsula aren’t they?

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  2. Wow. It looks like you were blessed with an absolutely beautiful day to enjoy the valley. Happy anniversary!! Sending love from TN.

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