 Sunrise at Dewey Point
|
| “Recuperate. Regroup.
Re-energize.” That was the theme I set for
summer 2013,
and Yosemite National Park is a great place for pursuing such
objectives.
I was able to make a brief visit from June 4-7. This proved a
pretty good time to visit; the spring flowers were
out, I missed the Memorial Day
crowd, and as some kids were still in school it was not as crowded as
it will be later in the summer. A little earlier might have
allowed me to see some of the water trickles coming down the rock
behind the Ahwanhee Hotel—they had mostly dried up—and I didn't make
it to the giant sequoias, but all in all it was a good trip.
Yosemite is “still the one.”
I left Los Angeles at 5:55 a.m. in hopes of obtaining a camping space at Camp 4 in the Valley. By the time I arrived the campground was full, as was every camping space in the Valley. I ended up staying at a National Forest Service campground near the Tioga Pass entrance, and this provided good access to the Tuolumne Meadows area. I did visit the Valley a couple of times and saw some of the attractions there; it’s a bit of a zoo and on one day the temperature reached 97 degrees. On my trip I did one overnight, to Dewey Point. Having not been camping for some years, my gear and supplies were not as good as they should have been, and I was concerned about rain and also uncertain about my capabilities for medium and longer hikes. In retrospect, I should have made it a longer trip and done less in the Valley and more overnights or hikes in the high country. I did take some photos using my Nikon D5100 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm 1:3.5-5.6 lens and a traditional UV filter to protect the lens. Most of these are shown mostly full frame with no or very minimal editing in the pages that follow. A few of the images are repeated to illustrate different points. |
 Tenaya Lake
|