Pictures from Yosemite

July 1, 2007 at 7:09 AM

As promised, pictures from Yosemite!

I'd never been to Yosemite, which is a major National Park in California that has some really, really big rocks and really, really big trees.

Driving to the Yosemite Valley involves a lot of twists and turns and children saying, "Mommy, I f-f-feel sick, I think I'm gonna..." Fortunately, no one lost their breakfast.

As soon as one goes through the tunnel into the valley, an amazing view appears, and that's where we took a little family picture. Actually, a complete stranger took the picture. What's great about Yosemite is that it attracts all kinds of professional and amateur photographers, so this guy got us from three different angles and really tried to capture what he could.

Once in the park, we hiked several miles up to Vernal Falls, where I handed the camera to my seven-year-old son, who took yet another portrait that I'll call: "Mom in yellow hat, with unprepared smile." I was fine until the hike down, when I had the acrophobic experience of actually looking down (and climbing down!) the rather long, steep set of rock "steps" we'd so easily scrambled up.

I took the picture of the 80-year-old Ahwahnee Hotel, with the great big rock wall in the background. It is very fancy and costs $a-zillion to stay there. It is NOT where we stayed. We stayed outside the park, thus the winding road.

I'd never seen a giant sequoia tree -- these are up to 3,000-year-old trees, and the tallest one at Yosemite is about 290 feet, or 88 meters, high. It's really hard to catch the scale of these in a picture, but you can kind of tell, with us standing by the fallen tree, that they are really huge.

The best picture I took, personally, was of my blue tin cup of chili at a "Cowboy Cookout" that we went on with the kids. We had something even better than an open bar: all the s'mores you can eat. A s'more is an American concoction that involves smashing a toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers, with some Hershey's chocolate in between. The chocolate melts, and the gooey combination is such a treat, you just want, well, s'more. These were double s'mores: two marshmallows, which we cooked on long wire skewers over a campfire, with six squares of Hershey's. My children ate an undisclosed amount, I had two, and Robert, showing a bit more restraint, had but one square of chocolate.

So that's it, a little California dreamin' for your practice break!

From Gary Foote
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 12:31 PM

Laurie, those are the coolest pics; I've always wanted to got to Yosemite,it sounds like you had the greatest time... thanks for sharing!

From Wayne Schafer
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 1:11 PM

Hi Laurie,
I was looking forward to a return to Yosemite.

But unfortunately the WebShots slide show does not work on my Macintosh computer. Does anyone else have that problem?

From Ray Randall
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 3:57 PM

What a wonderful treasure Yosemite is. I flew over it hundreds of times and never got to see it the right way like you did. Thanks for sharing those great pictures.

From Laurie Niles
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 4:25 PM

Hmmmm, this slide show tool is a new experiment, so let me ask Robert about that....

From Sydney Menees
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 4:53 PM

Yosemite is one of my all-time favorite vacation venues. I really would like to go back to CA right now...

From Ihnsouk Guim
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 9:13 PM

wayne, I had no trouble with the slide show on my MacIntosh. I have an iMac running on Mac X something or other.

Ihnsouk

From Wayne Schafer
Posted on July 1, 2007 at 9:44 PM

Thanks Ihnsouk,
That reminded me that when Safari fails, try Firefox. I generally use Safari for its better appearance (in my perhaps faulty judgement). In this case Firefox works perfectly revealing some beautiful photos.

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on July 2, 2007 at 6:02 AM

A tree 290' tall and s'mores with 6 squares of Hershey's chocolate -- I love good things in big sizes. Thanks for posting the photos and telling us about your vacation.

From Kim Gorman
Posted on July 2, 2007 at 6:39 PM

I just finished my teacher for the year for [url]http://www.musikalessons.com[/url] (Great company if any of you are looking for work) Anyway, does anyone have any ideas for summer festivals?

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Pictures from Yosemite

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