Weather can be fickle. Yesterday we went into stunning Yosemite Valley and spent the entire day wandering about the valley floor. The weather was almost perfect; a bit of haze but otherwise bright and sunny. Today was a different story. It rained late last night and as we drove over the ridges between our campground and the park, we ran into heavy fog offering visibility of less than 75 feet. We continued anyway expecting the fog to lift since we could see clear skies way off in the west.
We were wrong. The waterfalls and extraordinary rock walls of the glacially-formed valley were not visible this morning except right down at their bottoms. After a spin around the valley floor loop, we decided to try going out CA-41 through the long Wawona tunnel and driving up to Glacier Point which is a few thousand feet higher along the upper edge of the valley. The fog was even heavier or maybe we had just driven into the clouds but either way there were only quick glimpses of the massive valley below us as the clouds blew by. What quick views we had were gorgeous but fleeting. There was snowmelt water running everywhere, sometimes in big streams across the road.
The road to Glacier Point is steep and very screwy so the speed limits are either 25 mph or 35 mph and it seemed only road racing vehicles could go faster than the posted limits. Driving errors along this road are either expensive or fatal. We nearly crashed into a couple of oncoming vehicles that had drivers who believed it was perfectly acceptable for them to drive with a portion of their vehicles in the our opposing lane, particularly on corners. Their dramatic corrections to leave our lane before contact gave some of them comical facial expressions, mostly of terror.
When we arrived back on the valley floor around 2:00 PM, the fog had lifted somewhat so we took another spin around the loop to see some of the grand views we fell in love with yesterday. Yosemite Falls was visible from the top of the first plunge all the way to the bottom of the lower falls. The swinging bridge across the Merced River, which had about two feet of clearance between the bridge and the surface of the river yesterday had no clearance today. The spot where Ansel Adams took his trademark picture of the valley with Bridalveil Falls on the right and massive El Capitan on the right was available to us today and the view was stunning.
We finally finished up our second loop and drove back down CA-120 to our campground in Buck’s Meadow. We will gather up our satellite antenna, dump tanks, disconnect from the water and electrical service and depart tomorrow for points further north in California. It has been very pleasant being in the mountains where it is cool after our last few stops in Menifee, Acton and Three Rivers where it was quite warm. We are headed for the Siskiyou Range that divides Oregon and California with stops along the way someplace north of Sacramento, maybe a stop in Red Bluff and another near Mount Shasta. I am glad I had the truck and trailer recently serviced because we have to go back down Priest Grade first thing tomorrow. I’m glad we have new brakes because we will need them.
We got some pix you can see if you click here