California- Days 3, 4 & 5- Yosemite National Park

After leaving San Francisco, we loaded up the fam and headed northeast to Yosemite National Park. We actually stayed in a campground about 30 minutes outside of the park in a really cute little town called Groveland. Our campground was nice and had a wonderful pool...that Harper swam in every night.
Each day we drove to Yosemite and saw the sights. It was much warmer here than in San Fran...about 98-103 degrees each day. But in talking with some of the locals...this was totally unexpected, like a heatwave of sorts. Depsite the heat, there were many ways to cool off in the park.
National Parks are always so amazing to me...it is like a hidden treasure. You're driving along and out of nowhere pops a waterfall, rocky cliff, wildlife...so much fun!
Monday:
This day we drove to Yosemite Valley. This is where most of the tourists visit and something like 80% of visitors to Yosemite never leave the Valley. This day we hiked ot see Yosmetie Chapel, the oldest structure still in the park. We also hiked to see the Upper and Lower Falls...talk about amazing. We hiked about 1/2 mile back to the base of the lower falls and were sure glad we did. The mist from the fall was very refreshing. Harper, Richard and I actually treked up the boulders to the very bottom of the falls. We got really wet! The rocks were slippery and Daddy lost his footing, but Harper's hand braced his fall. The Booboo patrol had to called out for the small scrape on Harper's hand! :) We also took a break at a stream to get our feet wet. Very cold!



Tuesday:
We returned to the Valley today to see more of Yosemite's treasures. We stopped on our way into the Valley to hike the 3/4 mile loop to Bridalveil Fall...again refreshing!
After that we began our 2 mile trek to Mirror Lake...a lake created in the late 80's early 90's by a rockslide. It was gorgeous and of course provided many opportunities to get back into the water. We brought a picnic lunch and sat by the lake to enjoy! Of course the water was super chilly, but that didn't stop our little adventurer!




Wednesday:
Our trek took us a little bit further on Wednesday. We headed to the southern part of Yosemite to visit the Mariposa Grove. It is the largest grove of Sequoias in Yosemite. Wow...those are some trees! I knew they would be big, but I had no idea. They were huge! We also found some really big pinecones, but learned that they were actually from the Ponderosa Pine. The Sequoias have really tine, egg-shaped pine cones.



Yosemtie, like all of the other National Parks we have visited, was stunning! Nothing like 3 days in nature to refresh the soul!