A Day In Yosemite
By: Ivy Lim
Spending a day in Yosemite is not enough. But if you only have a day you can make it worthwhile.
It’s about four hours of driving to get to Yosemite National Park from San Francisco. That’s a few hours of driving across winding uphill roads. The nearest city that has affordable hotels or motels would be Merced, which is about two hours away from Yosemite. You can also bring some food. There’s also a food court beside the Yosemite Valley Lodge.
You can also diy your way and just park at designated view points. Sure you get to appreciate the park, however, without context or the history behind discovering this valley, it would surely deprive you of its wonder.
Take the tour bus, the Valley Floor Tour. I booked the tickets in advance to make sure we get seats on the bus. It was about $36 per person. It is separate from the entrance to the park itself. For me, I recommend this guided tour to truly admire, appreciate Yosemite. It takes 2 hours and the bus will tour you around and explain the different sights of interest and relay the history of the park. Our tour bus driver was very knowledgeable on the history and the places of interest inside Yosemite. He even recommended where to go hiking if there were any avid hikers in our group.
April 2019 was still cold. Best to layer up if you’re going to take pictures. It can be quite chilly. Glad that we took the tour so we wouldn’t have to drive ourselves around the park. Honestly, it didn’t feel like two hours since our guide was very entertaining. Time is frozen once inside Yosemite National Park. Almost as if the mountains and the trees are the way they were some hundred or thousand years ago. Still somewhat the same despite the changes in global climate.
El Capitan, a huge rock formation
The valley itself is surrounded by granite like rock formations that have a height of thousands of meters. Once you’re there, it’s just awesome to see such gigantic formations that it seems unreal, higher than some skyscrapers. It looks like they’re chiseled but from the Earth’s changes in climate, it has formed these mountainous monuments. El Capitan is one of the highest in the park. If you’ve watched the documentary “Free Solo”, this is where Alex Honnold successfully climbed up El Capitan without any harness. Our guide shared that information and was lucky enough to have seen the documentary on the EVA Air inflight movies. It does look impossible and dangerous to even attempt such feat.
Deers just strolling around
There are still a lot of animals. Some of them are just hiding like the bobcat we saw earlier. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take a picture of it and by the time I got out my phone to take a picture, it quickly hid in the bushes. I managed to take some pictures of wild deers. Good thing that our bus driver stopped so we could all marvel their wild habitat. We didn’t see any bears which is a comfort in knowing you won’t be attacked by them if the situation arises. Wish that there could be more parks like these in the world.
Another awesome view, there are two waterfalls in this picture
In the winter, these waterfalls are frozen. That’s no surprise there. Our driver said that some hikers would hike up to the falls. It just looks amazing from where we were standing. It took me a while to see that there was a smaller waterfall near the bottom part of the mountain. I’m probably guessing that winter is also beautiful to see this view. Imagine snow covered mountains that are so pure white. No doubt it would be beautiful.
Panoramic view of the open plains
A day wasn’t enough or rather a few hours weren’t enough to relax. The sight of nature, the awesome views were truly calming and relaxing. Feeling you’re one with nature even for a moment is something we need for ourselves. It’s a nice getaway from the city life. Fresh air and cool weather, I think that’s just what we truly need.
If you want to visit Yosemite National Park even for a day trip, go there early. Book the Yosemite Valley Floor tickets in advance. I’ll be posting the website at the end of this entry. Pay your tickets online and remember to get your tickets at the Yosemite Valley Lodge at least 15-20 minutes before your scheduled tour. We took the 10:00 AM tour to make most of the day. We had late lunch at the food court beside the Valley Lodge. We couldn’t extend our stay since we needed to get on the road to Visalia, a city near Sequoia National Park. Maybe next time I’ll come back. Well at least I’m looking forward to coming back.
Take lots of pictures and enjoy if you get a chance to visit Yosemite. Worth it to visit!
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