June 3, Yosemite

Left about 8am for the park. More hill climbing, the park entrance is about 5,000 ft. We paid our $20 entrance fee then headed for Glacier Point viewpoint. The 16 mile road was closed for the winter until 3 weeks ago but it is 80 degrees out today and the snow is all gone. Altitude 7214 ft.

Half Dome and Yosemite Valley

From Glacier Point there are tremendous views of Half Dome and the Yosemite valley. You look straight down into Yosemite Village from a vertical cliff.

Mickey wades in the Merced River
 in Yosemite Valley

We had a snack then drove back down to the valley floor. We drove along the Merced River and ,from the information Karen learned from our iPad app on Yosemite, we found a sandy beach where we stopped and had our lunch . We and Mickey waded in the river to cool our feet and Mickey had a good roll in the sand, he really enjoyed it after all the truck time.

Half Dome and the Merced River

After that we toured the park, stopping lots of times to take too many pictures of waterfalls and huge walls of rock. The park is full of people, hard to find a parking spot.

Yosemite Falls

On the way out we stopped to see El Capitan ,a huge granite mountain that is popular with climbers, altitude 7569 ft. Our information said to look for little colored specks on the face and sure enough we found a couple. They were climbers, about ¼ of the way down from the top. Apparently they can take several days to make the ascent, sleeping in shelters anchored to the rock face.

El Capitan, climber  1/4 way down on left face

Climber on El Capitan