Another trip into Yosemite National Park filled our day today. Instead of planning another excursion on the valley floor, we chose to drive from our RV park down into Yosemite Valley but continued without lingering up the other side of the Valley to an alleged town (really just an intersection) called Chinquapin. At Chinquapin, we turned off onto the Glacier Point Road and continued for about 15 or 20 miles on a serpentine and regularly quite narrow road. At the end, we arrived at Glacier Point.

Glacier Point is on the south edge of the Valley some 3500 feet above the floor. The views of Half Dome and thundering Nevada Falls are spectacular. Yosemite Valley can be seen thousands of feet below and a magnificent range of very high Sierra peaks can be seen thousands of feet above. It is a stunning place but the air is pretty thin and I was gasping like a steam engine while wandering about. Peggy seems to be in much better shape because she was outdistancing me and stopping while I wheezed along behind.

Despite the wheezing and the 2 hour drive each way, the reward of the glorious views is really worth it. There is nothing boring along the way and the passage through a bit of the Valley floor is magical. It is difficult to find an unappealing sight here; flowers, roaring and trickling waterfalls, tumbling river rapids and placid pools, forests of pine and redwood trees, dramatic ridges, cliffs and ravines, snow fields and grassy meadows line the roads all the way there. Fortunately, this place was declared a national park during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration and no greedy idiots have figured out a way to engage in logging and mining here since. We hope it stays that way and does not fall victim to the fate of the adjacent Hetch Hetchy Valley which was flooded so San Francisco can have crystal-clear drinking water. San Francisco just ain’t worth it.

See photos. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/kSG9QHognBSwXgcNA