Yosemite Day 2

I woke up this morning to rain.  They had not seen rain in Yosemite since June.  In the Valley they had an Ansel Adams Gallery,  so I decided to head there and do the tourist thing and walk around Yosemite Village. The gallery was really touristy,  but was nice to see some of his work from Yosemite.  I bought some ice cream from the store, and decided there were too many people and headed back to my camper for lunch.  As I was having lunch,  the rain cleared and the valley became sunny.  I wasn’t far from Sentinel Bridge,  so I hiked that way to get the famous reflection picture of Half Dome (no reason to get the truck out of the parking lot at this point)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took my time going through the valley and decided to head up to Glacier Point.  On the way up, you pass the Tunnel View Point; which is one of the most photographed points in the park.  Glacier Point is an overlook with a view of the Yosemite Valley,  Half Dome, and Yosemite’s high country.  It is also one of the best places to photograph sunset (usually).    I stayed up at Glacier Point for about 3.5 hours in order to photograph sunset.  It was interesting to see all the other photographers up there jostling for the perfect place to take their pictures.  

 

 

I ran into Brad again, and he was up there doing more time lapse and had been there already a few hours.  About an hour before sunset,  a wave of clouds came over the mountain behind us and covered the upper part of the valley.  We could see the valley,  but Half Dome was gone.   We kept hoping it would clear and it kept showing us little glimpses that it might,  so we all stayed hoping for a good picture.  It never really happened and I packed it in for my drive back to Hodgdon Meadows campground for the night.  What I didn’t realize, was that the clouds had covered the back side of the mountain, and the fog/clouds were so thick that many places I could only go about 5 miles per hour.  It took me about 1.5 hours to get back to the campground for the night.  I made it safely, had some dinner, and headed to bed.