Day 21 - Amazing Yosemite National Park

We decided to stay in the Marriott in Oakhurst about 40 miles from the southern entrance gate of Yosemite National Park. We set off about 9:30am on our way to visit the park. After a 45 minute drive we arrived at the gate only to learn we had another 35 mile drive to get to the Yosemite valley village and start our adventure. 35 miles of white knuckle driving, especially for Sandy who is deathly afraid of heights, and she wasn't even driving!

BUT what an incredible day we had exploring Yosemite National park! It’s really hard to describe the overwhelming natural beauty this park offers. It was cold at times, warm at other times, but few visitors, which gave us total access to everything the park has to offer. We probably took at least 200 pictures between us during the visit. It was hard to choose the highlights, but here are a just a few of the pictures. As you can see, the vistas make any photographer look good!!


El Capitan



Tent pitched mid-way up this sheer face of El Capitan. Don't know if you can see it by zooming in, but it heckled our nerves!

Clouds below the top of El Capitan late in the day.


Amazing waterfall!

We got great accomodations for the night! Room 312. Just kidding. It looks a little more rough than we are up to, but it might have been fun 30 years ago!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 38 - Grand Ole Opry

Image
We arrived in Nashville this afternoon. After checking into our hotel we headed over to the Grand Ole Opry. This is our first time in Nashville and we are newbies to the Opry. We were able to get tickets for tonight's show. We saw some amazing performers, including Jacob Bryant with his Grand Ole Opry debut and Tony Jackson, who made his debut in 2019 and has an amazing, unforgetable voice and Mark Wills, who performed the touching last song of the evening with a young girl guest performer who signed while he sang "Don't Laugh At Me". What a great way to end the evening! In front of the Grand Ole Opry We arrived early and the usher took our picture with the view from our seats The program for the night
Read more

We're Really Going To Do This!

Image
Hello friends and family. This is Phil and Sandy Quartuccio and we are getting ready to check off a big item on our bucket list. We are a year into retirement now and looking forward to seeing this beautiful country we live in. Come along with us, via this blog, as we embark on a 45-day road trip from NY to CA and back. We've got a rough itinerary mapped out. Massapequa, NY to Tallahassee, FL Tallahassee, FL to Yosemite, CA Yosemite, CA to Nashville, TN                           Nashville, TN to Massapequa, NY Sandy laid out the plans in an Excel spreadsheet template using Google Maps to estimate drive times, but we are not making any reservations. With weather, driving conditions, and COVID concerns (of course), who wants commitments to reservations?? We have a road atlas in case the internet GPS fails us, an air mattress and tent for Phil's Tacoma in case we can't get a hotel room, and a port-a-potty in case......
Read more

Day 31 - Grand Canyon

Image
 We woke up early to catch the sunrise after spending the night in the village at Grand Canyon in the Thunderbird hotel. It's pretty cold in the morning. Brrr The canyon in the early morning sun Sandy staying warm in early morning as we start out on a hike around the rim to see the sunrise. Taking in the beautiful vista. The temperatures warm up nicely by mid-morning. Bright Angel Trail - Phil's a little close to the edge!!! The beginning of Bright Angel Trail. We only made it to about half way down the part of the trail you see in this picture. After Sandy slipped on the icy trail we abandoned our trek and headed back up to the rim!  It was great to have binoculars to scout out the Colorado river. We were only able to hike down maybe 1/6th of the trail! And there is no way we would ride the donkeys down after hearing how close those donkeys walk on the edge of the trail!!! The trail was icy in places and crampons were recommended. There were no donkeys on the trail anyway. An...
Read more