Yosemite 2010 - Day 1 - July 29

Yosemite Falls - Upper and Lower Falls

Day One - July 29, 2010

We got up early to catch a flight out of Orlando. We actually flew over Disney World in the early morning hours. It was so cool to see the Magic Kingdom from overhead. We also flew right along the Florida gulf coast so I'm sure I could have seen our house in Crawfordville. I actually DID see Apalachicola, St. George Island and St. Joe's Peninsula. Very cool. It was like looking down at a huge map. Poor Matt had the middle seat and he slept most of the way. After a layover in Dallas we headed farther west to San Jose, CA.

Once we landed in San Jose, we met up with Martin and Maggie and started the 4 hour drive out to Yosemite. We had fun talking and listening to music. We were so excited when we finally started seeing mountains. After a little detour when the navigation lead us to a closed road, we made it into the park. We stopped at the first pull-off we saw and headed down to enjoy the mountain stream and fresh mountain air. It was so exciting to finally be there and experience the hugeness of the mountains and the trees. It is an incredibly beautiful place.

Me, enjoying the first stream and finally being out of a car or plane after about 9 hours of traveling.

We headed farther into the park and we finally came up to Yosemite Falls. This is what we were climbing the next day. I got a real sense of how far up we were going to have to go.

Click on this photo so you can see my comments.

You can see the line of tiny cars at the bottom of the screen. (Between the green grass and the darker green trees.) That sort of puts the size and height of the falls into perspective. We were already at 4,000 above sea level inside Yosemite Valley. We were going to climb another 4,000 feet the next day to the top of the falls which is at approx. 8,000 feet. Pretty wild.

We also got our first glimpse of Half Dome. This mountain was so beautiful. We had great views of Half Dome our entire hike, but I have to say that this first image with the afternoon sun practically glaring off the rocks really took my breath away. Absolutely gorgeous.

There is a special campsite for backpackers to use on the night before and after their actual hike. We were right underneath Half Dome. The camp was kind of hidden behind another camping area and with the sun going down it was difficult to find. We finally found it and set up our camp. We headed over to Yosemite's Camp Curry for our "last supper". It was late and our only choice was pizza which was fine by us. We filled up on pizza and headed back to camp.

Home Sweet Home

We were super excited to finally be in the park. I think this excitement was a good thing as I found out the next day that I really needed that extra adrenaline.

Day 2 - starting our hike up the Falls starts tomorrow!