Yosemite National Park Day 2 - The Valley

At 4:50AM on Tuesday, September 6, 2016, I woke up in Yosemite National Park at site #410 in Crane Flat Campground. Or, it could have been heaven. I wasn't sure at first. At least not until I started getting moving and had to deal with the bear container. And, I think I had been grinning all night.

It was 51 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies. The sky was light but the sun wasn't in sight - it was the perfect time to get going!

I got dressed, brushed my teeth, and left the campground as stealthily as I could. I went to the Crane Flat Store and filled up with fuel. That's a good time to take care of that - there was only one other person fueling at that time of day. The other times I'd pulled through the store it was busy as heck. There wasn't any other fuel for maybe 50 miles so the Crane Flat Store always had a waiting line - for fuel as well as the store itself, the pay phone, and the restrooms.

Half Dome from near Curry Village

I left the store and headed east on Big Oak Flat Road towards the valley for my first time. I thought I'd hit Glacier Point but after merging on to El Portal Road and the Southside Drive, and then getting to the fork in the road with Wawona Road, I decided to go get my Half Dome shots instead and didn't take the turn.

I drove to the end of the valley, driving through Curry Village and both Pines Campgrounds and discovered there weren't any great shots of Half Dome from there. I went back to the meadow where Curry Village Drive intersects with Happy Isle Loop Road and parked the Explorer. I got a few shots from there of Half Dome and the meadow. I really planned to go back there sometime to walk around the meadow or hopefully even the Mirror Lake Trail but never did make it. I guess that'll be for another visit.

Looking North at the valley near Curry Village

When you look at Half Dome from that meadow it's hard to tell the scale. The meadow (well, Curry Village) is at about 4,000 feet elevation. The top of Half Dome is at 8,839 feet, approaching 5,000 feet or just shy of a mile higher than the valley and almost straight up from the valley floor. Impressive!

This shot of Half Dome isn't great. The sky was clear with the sun behind the mountain. I tried editing it to get some blue to come out but no luck. And, the granite has a blue cast. I'll have to work on it...

I didn't think that the sunrise was going to much good from that location; the sun was going to rise behind Half Dome. I decided to head back to El Capitan to see what I could get there.

North Dome (I believe - the peak on the left)
and Half Dome

El Capitan is at the south-west end of the Yosemite Valley. For those of you who don't know, which I didn't until I started looking into Yosemite, the Yosemite Valley area is the main tourist attraction part of Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park is about 45 miles high by 35 miles wide, encompassing about 1,200 square miles. It is roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island and was visited by about 4.3 million people in 2015.

The Yosemite Valley, which is where the Yosemite Village including the Ansel Adams Gallery, views of Half Dome, El Capitan, and Yosemite Falls, is about 7 miles long and 1 mile wide. The Merced river falls into the valley from Vernal Falls and meanders through the valley from east to west. The Yosemite Valley is probably the most famous part of the park but it is not the entire park.

One of the valley's permanent residents

There was some road construction going on during my visit so I got to detour around the Yosemite Village area. As I was getting out of the built up portion of the valley I encountered a deer in the road. He basically paid me no mind after he convinced himself I wasn't going to run him over, taking his time to get out of the road and continue grazing along the sidewalk. I'm guessing that he's probably encountered a human before.

I continued on towards El Capitan along Norhtside Drive, passing by the Yosemite Falls Trail entrance. It's quite a noticeable structure, leading to the tallest waterfall in the United States at 2,435 feet high (a bit less than 1/2 of a mile). However, I had found the Yosemite Conservancy's Yosemite Falls webcam and knew that there was no water coming over the falls. It was bone dry and I thought I might walk up the trail but never did make it. In fact I didn't even get a picture of the entrance.

El Capitan peeking through some pine trees

I started glimpsing El Capitan through the trees. What an imposing bit of rock! It sits closer to the road than Half Dome and has about a 3,000 foot face. I actually like how it seems to be revealed to you slowly as you approach from the Village end of the valley, building up the excitement. I have watched a few YouTube videos about people climbing El Capitan and I have seen the same gradual view of the mountain. Now I was seeing it in person!

The traffic at this time was still pretty good, by the way. It was still about 7:00 AM and the rest of the tourists were probably still in bed or just getting their breakfast. I hadn't eaten yet, saving that task for a bit later, after I tried to get a sunrise shot or two. I was only going to have a few mornings in the park, and probably only one in the valley, and I didn't want to waste it eating.

The sun greets El Capitan

I pulled off the side of the road a bit west of El Capitan on one of the turnouts and set up to get some shots as the sun came up and hit the face. What a lovely site! I would end up spending most of my time in the valley shooting El Capitan instead of Half Dome or anything else. The Merced had water but not a lot. The waterfalls were not of interest in the limited time I had. The village itself isn't really that photogenic and once the other tourists started arriving it wasn't that fun to negotiate around them (especially with the road construction).

I shot a good number of photographs with my DSLR and then headed back to the village after the sun was basically fully up over El Capitan. I did stop and take a few shots from the Merced.

I had to climb over a good number of boulders to get to the location where I shot the Merced / El Capitan shots from and I have to say, I enjoyed the heck out of it. There was another guy there also shooting, one stop up from mine. I ended up walking around him so I could be in front of him, ruining his shot instead of the other way around.

El Capitan from the Merced River

He wasn't getting his feet wet though and I was. I really wanted to be over the water but never did find a truly great spot. I tried a few places but with the water so low I wasn't going to get any kind of reflection. For the photogs, I found my Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G was not wide enough. I had to switch to my 16-35mm f/4 in order to fit this shot.

It struck me how lucky I was to have the selection of lenses I needed. I actually had them laid out in the back of the Explorer. When I got to this location I tried the 50mm to see if it was okay, which it wasn't. By the time I'd tried the 20mm and realized I needed an even wider lens, I was not only grinning about being in Yosemite Valley but I was also grinning about my photo gear.

I had my lenses laid out like a smorgasbord of nice glass and was using them (well, I hadn't used the telephotos much - yet).

And, I thought I was making good choices. If I wasn't carrying my gear bag I did a quick look through a lens to see if it would work. If not I'd switch it with the one that would work. And I had a lens for most needs.

What I didn't have, though, was a neutral density for the 16-35 that would let me slow down the exposure to get the silky water in front of El Capitan. I was a bit bummed, especially since I'd made half of an attempt to get one from Tempe Camera before leaving but they didn't have one (for the Cokin system). However, once I got to the water and saw there wasn't anything to slow down anyway my grins came back.

Phone booth and shuttle outside Degnan's Deli

I continued on to the Yosemite Village area where I walked around a bit. I got a wonderful breakfast burrito and dark, strong, hot coffee from Degnan's Deli. The burrito is NOT on the menu. I had visited the main Yosemite Store, looking for hot coffee. I picked up souvenirs but they didn't like like they'd be good for breakfast so I put them in my Explorer and kept walking.

I had met a young couple on a sidewalk and the woman had a coffee. I asked where she got it and they told me Degnan's so I promptly asked about a breakfast burrito and the man said he'd had a huge one there. I was on my way!

I sat outside to eat it, observed constantly by squirrels, and watched the shuttle come and go. Afterwards I called my wife (I wasn't sure that anyone else's wife would answer my phone call) using the pay phone. No cell phone reception for me.

I walked through the Ansel Adams Gallery where they had an original print of "Muir Pass, the Black Giant" priced at only $84,900. I was at least $100 short so I didn't get it.

I strolled through the visitors center with a lot of information about the park. I got to see a life size bronze statue of John Muir. I sat outside of the theater deciding if I wanted to wait for the next show and took a shot of the mountain above the village.

Ansel Adams Gallery

Bronze statue of John Muir

The view from the theater

My wife had put in an order for a stainless steel souvenir ring so I stopped in the store again to get that. I have to say that I have kind of changed my souvenir purchasing. I like getting something from the places I visit but I don't need useless things.

In the past I've tended to buy T-shirts and I'd wear them. But I've got so many of them (including concert and sporting event shirts) that I gave away a good number that I'd never worn at Christmas last year to a family we sponsored at work. I have been avoiding buying them the last couple of years and instead I've been getting ball caps.

I wear ball caps when I'm camping and not getting a shower in order to hide my (barely) less than perfect coiffure. But the caps that were available were just not to my liking. They had a lot of calligraphy type fonts which looked like gangster styles to me and I just didn't care for them.

Heading to El Capitan along Northside Drive

What I started last year was getting stainless steel rings and I kind of like them. I got my first one from the gift store at Cape Foulweather on the Oregon coast on my way to my 40th high school reunion last year. Then I picked one up from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I added one from Yosemite. Then it was off for some time in front of El Capitan.

I passed by Camp 4 and was tempted to drive through it. That is where the people stay that plan to climb El Capitan and the other rocks like Half Dome. But I kept going...

Getting full of myself, I wanted to try to get to the base of El Capitan. I first pulled in to the El Capitan picnic area thinking I might be able to get to it from there. Since there was no one else around I decided it would be a good place to remove my long underwear in the outhouse. Since there was no one around but me it must have seemed like a good place for about 5 other cars to pull in to while I was changing my clothes, and for the occupants of those cars to see if the bathroom was available.

El Capitan's first line of defense

After getting out of the bathroom, I grabbed some gear and walked down the trail towards El Capitan but soon realized (after it came in to view) that I was quite a ways from it. I got back in my Exploder to drive a bit closer.

I got to the next pull off where there's a trail head. I didn't notice the trail head at first so started trying to just make my way through the pines, boulders, and underbrush up to the base of the cliff. I didn't make it too far. I climbed up a good number of boulders, wiggled through some stickery shrubs, but it became too much for me to navigate while holding my tripod.

I headed back to the car and that's when I saw the nice, wide, manicured trail with a number of other folk on it so I headed down it.

I got a ways down and started talking with a pretty young slender gal (aren't they all?) about the face. She said the trail went right up to the face - something I never found out because I started shooting from right there and just didn't finish the trek. Another thing I'll have to do on my next visit.

The reason I got distracted was because there were climbers on the mountain. I started shooting photographs of them. I had my Nikkor 70-200mm telephoto zoom and put it on. Other folks were passing by and a family of 4 got very interested in the shots and wanted to see them on the back panel. You could see some details about the climbers, their gear, and the cliff face itself. Then a group of about 5 young men who were also photographing stopped and took some shots and we talked for a while. It was a photographic geek and appreciation fest for maybe 45 minutes or so! Man I was enjoying my visit!

El Capitan Meadow, looking southish

I decided to head back to my Explorer, then drove to the El Capitan Meadow which is across the Northside Drive from El Capitan. There is a good bit of parking on the meadow side of the road and I took advantage of it and then walked out in to the meadow near a fallen tree that was also in shade.

The meadow has wonderful, long grass even though it was more brown than green in early September. But it's the type of meadow you don't see a lot of in Arizona. I'd seen another meadow the year before at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and also enjoyed it. I hadn't wanted to leave it either.

This time I took my Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 with me into the meadow. I set up near the fallen tree where there was no one else.I got my 200-500mm lens on and started taking some shots. Within about 10 minutes I had a number of other folks either talking to me or congregating at the fallen tree, wondering why I was there. I think there were about a dozen people there. That was okay until the photography expert decided to join us.

Climbers on El Capitan

I shot some photographs of the climbers using the 200-500mm lens. The photography expert was asking how the lens was doing to which I replied it looks pretty good so he went to get his copy along with 2 tripods and 2 cameras. I didn't mind until he almost stepped on my bag with my other 4 lenses in it. I guess the shot was so good where I was in the open field that he couldn't set up 5 feet away in order to avoid stepping on my equipment.

I got up and left and went to take shots of other things in the meadow.

I shot some follow up pics from the meadow and decided to cap off my valley day by visiting Tunnel View.

Tunnel View is a favorite viewpoint east of the long tunnel on Wawona Road, looking into Yosemite Valley. There's a good chance you've seen photographs from the view point. A recent (I believe September 2016) issue of National Geographic had a nice shot from there (actually, from up on the hill above the parking lot).

I went up there to see what I could see of the sunset. There were a decent group of tourists assembled, and a few DSLR folks too. I couldn't help myself - I had to join them!

Tunnel View Viewpoint with El Capitan on the left,
Cathedral Rocks on the right,
and Half Dome distant in the middle

I took some shots there and they were okay - you have to take a photograph there if you visit Yosemite. It wasn't until later that I realized the iconic shots from that location include Bridal Veil Falls, to the right of Cathedral Rocks.

Since there was such little water flowing over it I didn't even notice that it was there, or more precisely, I didn't notice it was missing.

Afterward I headed back to camp, stopping to take a few shots along the way from some viewpoints along the Big Oak Flat Road which I hadn't stopped for in the morning. It was getting to be about 5:00 PM and I wanted to get back to camp before it was completely dark in order to make another helping of ramen and sausage and Ritz crackers! I needed fuel to keep the grin alive!

Looking south from Big Oak Flat Road