Last week while I was supposedly on vacation – I say supposedly because I wound up being online nearly every day and answering questions and solving problems instead of relaxing – I drove down to Yosemite to meet my parents who had just made their way up from Bakersfield.
They are on their Round-The-Country camping trip, which they do every few years, and I have plenty of vacation this year and decided to meet them since I’d never been to Yosemite before. David wasn’t able to join me because he had a ton of work to do after the Labour Day holiday, so I hopped in the car and 3 hours later showed up at the campground.
After a mediocre meal at some local steak restaurant, we relaxed for the evening, watched a program on Roy Orbison, and went to bed. The next morning we set out for Yosemite National Park…a place I’d never been, and I don’t think they had been there either.
I will say this – I’d never seen anything like it before…the sheer rock walls that stretched to the sky were simply incredible. Everything else was pretty much what you’d expect from a national park. Lots of trees. I’ve seen the redwoods in Northern California, so the ones at Yosemite, while gorgeous in their own right, did pale in comparison to places like Armstrong Woods.
I’m a big fan of trees, so that’s the picture I’m featuring in this post. It’s a 4-shot series that I stitched together so you could get the feel for how glorious this tall tree is.
After many hours of driving along winding roads (probably good that David didn’t come since he gets car sick), we had traveled in to Yosemite village, visited the Ansel Adams gallery, had some pizza, saw exactly one animal (a deer), did some gift shopping, took pictures of funny signs, then made our way back out of the park and back to the campsite for an evening of relaxation.
Overall I was both impressed yet not impressed.
I was expecting something out of this world, but what I got was something of this world that I’ve seen in pictures for years. It didn’t hold the same feel for me as Lake Tahoe did when I first saw it, nor did it have the same joy as driving through the rolling hills of the wine country.
There are certainly many beautiful places in California, and Yosemite is one of them. But only one of them.
It’s unlikely I’ll go back, because I think once you’ve seen the rock walls surrounding you, that’s enough for one lifetime, and time to move on to the next big thing.
* Note: welcome to those of you who found this blog from the Sacramento Bee! Please feel free to subscribe and enjoy the dripping sarcasm that I typically have to offer.
