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<\/p>\nWe arrived late on Friday for Labor Day weekend. The campgrounds close to the valley were full and it was almost midnight when we found a spot at Yosemite Creek, down a 4-mile dirt road. We were relieved.<\/p>\n
The next morning:
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We planned to do the tourist circuit in the valley, see the major sights and do some easy hiking. We slept in and took our time on Saturday, and after a hour of driving, arrived in the valley around noon.<\/p>\n
First stop: Bridalveil Falls with a trickle of water left, but just enough.
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We played around on the rocks below, but they were too slippery, having been polished by millions of tourist shoes.
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So Leilani got her wish, and we stopped to play in the stream further back along the “trail.” You have to look closely at this picture:
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We found parking near Curry village and got supplies (the only things we didn’t have in our well-packed car were chocolate ice cream and firewood). Nearby were some very unafraid deer–our first Yosemite “wildlife:”
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Andy looked at a map and found an easy afternoon hike to Mirror lake. First we took a shuttle bus (which Leilani loved), then we walked on the old road. As soon as we could, we got on a trail. In the background to the left here is North Dome, but before we knew the name, Leilani said it looked like a volcano (which it did) so Andy called it Volcano Dome. But then Leilani said it looked like a birthday cake (which it didn’t) so she called it Birthday Cake Dome.
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Mirror Lake, with the Watkins Pinnacle (I think):
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Next to Mirror lake was a garden of cairns, I suppose so people can satisfy their urge to leave a cairn in Yosemite, without having stacked rocks all over the park. Some were really impressive:
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Next to Mirror Lake, which was starting to look like a mud puddle in places, there was a wide spot in the river which was perfect for Leilani to swim. She had been looking forward to this all day, no matter how cold the water was.
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Nearby was a beach, too. She was very happy to spread out her towel and lay in the sun:
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And all around was a spectacular view of the valley, here looking up at Half Dome:
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By the time we got back to the road, the sun was getting low, creating beautiful colors:
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Driving out of the valley, we had to stop to look at El Capitan. Andy spotted the climbers, and Sonja’s new zoom lens got the picture:
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The second image is a separate zoomed photo, not an enlargement of the first. But the rectangle shows where the climbers are located. They have a porta-ledge tied to the rock for sleeping on. This being a popular weekend, there were other climbers on the cliff as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We arrived late on Friday for Labor Day weekend. The campgrounds close to the valley were full and it was almost midnight when we found a spot at Yosemite Creek, down a 4-mile dirt road. We were relieved. The next…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2241"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions\/2256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}