Back from Yosemite

Just got back from Yosemite.

If you want to see some pictures check out my flickr page. If you click on the Yosemite grouping on the left you'll see them in order and you can then select to see it as a slide show. (on a side note flickr is cool).

Yosemite is amazing! Apparently a glacier cut a valley out of some mountains in the Sierras. So there is a valley with a river and several streams running through it and is surrounded by giant walls of granite rock. There are also several giant waterfalls.

On Thursday morning I got up crazy early (even by normal people standards) and drove south to meet up with Al and head north. (I work with Al and he has been an informal mentor.) Al has been going to Yosemite several times a year for over 15 years so he was quite the tour guide (and took care of most of the work). We did some hiking on some of the easier trails (well at least for people in better shape than me and from less flat states) but the snow and ice added some challenge. We did some walking around the valley and looked around the snazzy hotel in the valley where the elevators in the shining were filmed. That day it was snowing and in the hotel lobby lots of people were sitting around inside reading and using their laptops and I had a funny feeling like I was looking into a mirror of what I would normally being doing. But instead I had woken up that morning and gotten out of the tent, had some breakfast and sat outside and watched the snow come down for a few hours. The trip included some good sitting and doing nothing time - watching the snow one day and sitting in front of some big fires a few nights. Al also cooked up some good dinners including some power steaks. I have nothing to compare it with but according to Al we lucked out to have a large portion of the park to ourselves (I think the large snow storm on Friday probably scared off a lot of the campers who were supposed to be our neighbors for the weekend).

Overall I had a good time in an incredible place. I'll definitely have to head back and see what it's like in the summer. If you're not the camping type but want to check it out there are a number of room possibilities of various levels of fanciness.