Fritz's Eye on the World: Fritz's eye on Yosemite!!!

11-10-2011
So I was up early, got the blogging for the day out of the way, ate a nice breakfast at the local restaurant (had a great omelet, hash browns and English muffin with coffee and headed north to Yosemite.

As I drove up there I got into some real dense forests. I really couldn't see anything beyond the trees. Once I got to the Southern Gate and paid my $20 entrance fee (which is good for a week) I headed in and turned towards the giant Sequoias. Did I mention I was seeing a fair amount of snow on the side of the roads. Well once in the park it got worse. But I think it just added to the beauty of this park.

Now in my youth my parents often would take me and my brother Max down to Big Sur and we would play amoungst the giant redwoods. So I knew how tall trees like this could get. But these Sequoias were MAMMOTH!!

These trees were in the parking lot. I hadnt even gotten to the grove yet ;)
It was only about 9:30am and the sun was still rising which gave me some awesome photos to take....

So a side project of mine is to take a picture of my feet once a day. Today was cool because I was standing in snow (and ice)!

As as I was following the trail to the grove I saw a sign that said Grove Museum 1.6 miles ahead. I thought thats not far, ill go for it! That 1.6 Miles was all up hill! It was a beautiful hike but up and down took me close to 3 hours (got my exercise in for the day ;) Here are some of the cool sights I saw on my way up and back down.

The first stop was the Grizzly Giant. this Mammoth tree is over 1800 years old. These trees are the oldest living organism still alive today!

The tree limb on the upper right, near the top, is itself over 8 feet in diameter.

Next up the trail was the last standing tunnel tree. Now the famous on you see a car driving through collapsed a while ago as these "tunnels" are man made. This one is smaller (cant get a car through, but 4 people could walk side by side through it!)
But it is still impressive.

This is what it looks like from the inside....

and the dead center looking up looks like this.....

As I was hiking up and up I was startled by a noise to my left which turned out to be a family of dear having breakfast. I was standing only 15 feet from them. I think they are used to us 2 legged tourists.

The higher I got the more the terrain started to change.

When I got to the top, where the Museum was, I found....no one there!!

So now I headed back down following a grove trail (which was very snowy) and made it back down in about just over and hour and a half.

I really like the clouds in the shot below!

I know this has been a long post, and I have many more pictures, but I had no idea the best was yet to come. I get back to the parking lot and head off into the park proper (I was just on the southern edge)

The drive into the park was very winding and I had tall trees on either side of me as I was driving along, so there was no opportunity for good pictures. Once I got closer to the valley itself things started to open up.

But I had no idea what was about to happen next. A moment in my life when my jaw dropped and I was speechless. I got to the park of the road that entered a long ....long tunnel. There were signs flashing warning of ice on the roads and to slow down when exiting the tunnel, which I did as well as the car in front of me, when I popped out of the tunnel exit I was utterly stunned!!