We got up and left at 6 A to head to
Yosemite for our 8:30 tour to Glacier Point. The tour was four hours long a
nice, new tour bus. Sam, our tour guide, was very informative. We learned a lot
about the park we would not have known had we not taken the bus. There were 2
47 passenger busses headed to Glacier Point for the 8:30 tour. The road to Glacier Point was 16 miles of
zig-zag turns. He did a great job of maneuvering the turns and got us to
Glacier Point in one piece! Glacier Point was the #1 sight to see in Yosemite
on Tripadvisor.com. We got to the parking lot at the top of the mountain and
had an hour to spend walking around there. The elevation was 7,200+ feet above
sea level and the point we were at was 2-3,000 feet above the Yosemite Valley
floor. I had never been this high up! We could just barely make out people if
they were on bikes and cars were the size of a single peanut. It made you feel
a little queasy looking down so far below. We could see Half Dome, the famous
hiking and mountain climbing point in Yosemite, Yosemite Falls-the 2nd
tallest waterfall in the world other than one in Venezuela. However, this
waterfall dries up in the summer and was almost at a trickle when we saw it. It
only runs after the snow melts and sends water into the valley. The waterfall
is over 2,000 high.
Chris and I had a great time
walking around and even got to see a forest fire in the distance. The fire
started in May after a lightning strike. It has burned up about 130 acres and
since it is slow burning, the park service has let it go-pretty interesting to
just watch it burn with no assistance.
We got back on the bus and rode to
the valley floor where we boarded. The ride was great; I’d recommend it to
anyone. We ate lunch with the squirrels again today. They were so friendly and
expected to be fed. The pictures of birds you will see are called Stellar Jays.
They are in the Blue Jay family but have darker bodies and bright blue wings.
After lunch, we hopped on our bikes and rode a few miles around the Valley
floor. We got a closer glimpse of El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. I’m not sure
if I mentioned this in a previous post, but El Capitan is the tallest slate of
pure granite in the world. It is 4,000 feet above the Valley floor! People
flock here from all over the world to see this rock formation.
Chris and I got the tire changed at
Sullivan’s tire center and went to the grocery store to pick up a few things.
Some of the fruit was different than what we have at home and there were many
more fruits in season. I picked up some strange apricot mango fruit that looked
tasty as well as a few of the more typical things. We bought some chicken to
grill and had a really nice dinner. We saw our first lightning storm and got to
watch the lightning and listen to the rain for awhile while listening to some
good music outside the camper.
We woke up around 1 AM and the air
conditioner did not have a lot of power. Chris and I were getting hot! He
fiddled with it awhile and read about possible problems with the AC unit. We
decided it could be a number of things and we would stop at camping world in
the morning.
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