Miles 5857-6040: Mariposa and Yosemite (El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, and Tunnel View) (7/24)
That morning, we hung out at the house and then went into the park. The park was huge, and we only saw a small part of the valley. Our first stop was El Capitan, a really tall mountain with a sheer face. I wanted to see it because of a movie called Free Solo, where a man named Alex Honnold climbed the face with no ropes or safety gear. It was a little underwhelming at first, if only because there were other mountains right next to it that were just a little shorter than it. Once we came up to it, it was insane; over 2000 feet of sheer, straight-up rock, if not leaning backward at all. I couldn’t climb up 100 feet with a rope; the rock was smooth. We stopped at the visitor’s center and then walked down a trail toward Yosemite Falls. It was so tall, taller than the Lower Falls at Yellowstone. Our guides in Yellowstone and Grand Teton said that the Lower Falls were the tallest in America, but that was definitely not true. Maybe it only counts if it is there year-round; Yosemite Falls drys up in August and sometimes September. On our way back, we came across a rock field where people had made many rock towers. We each made one; it was really nice to be part of such an old tradition. I imagined coming back in several years and finding my tower still there. We went back to the car and went to eat lunch on the riverbank. There was no one else around, which was refreshing after being in such a crowded place. It is definitely the most popular national park we’ve been to. After eating lunch, I went wading in the river. It was pretty cold, but I didn’t feel it too much anymore after going swimming in cool water a good bit lately. It felt really good after such a hot day. It was another instance of realizing how much difference humidity made in the effects of heat. If it was that hot in Winston-Salem, it would have been so miserable that I wouldn’t have left the air-conditioned paradise of a building or car. In Yosemite, with lower humidity, it was only annoyingly hot, not miserably so. After drying off, we drove up to Tunnel View, a panoramic view of about half the valley. It was so cool, being able to see everywhere that we had been earlier that day. We could see people and cars on the roads and they were so tiny, compared to the falls, El Cap, or any of the other mountains around the valley. We drove back to the place in Mariposa. Jackson and I played badminton in the backyard, using a set that we found in a closet. I won, 38-32. We went out to dinner at 1850 in town. I got a grilled chicken salad that was good. After we came back to the house, I blogged about San Francisco and then got in bed.
“If I’m gonna do something, it’s gonna be sick and it’s gonna be so cool... or it’s gonna be the most hideous four seconds of my life while I just freefall to the ground!!”