Yo, Yo, Yosemite…You Are Spectacular

We have a confession to make…we absolutely love, love, love our National Park system. Yosemite joins the Grand Canyon, Big Bend and Everglades National Parks as don't miss places to visit. We had a wonderful three days in Yosemite.

The first day we drove an hour to the Valley part of the Park. The drive there was spectacularly scenic. First, we stopped at the Mariposa Visitor Center. We find those visits insightful and usually very helpful navigating our days.

Our second stop was at Wanona Pioneer Village only minutes away from the Visitor Center. Then we drove up a paved street that read “no through street”. A young family of four was hiking/walking the street and there was a car or two. Midway up the road we decided to turn around. As we started heading back as soon as we turned around a dude pulled next to us and said “Hey Connecticut, if you stay on this road and park, there is a 1/2 mile trail to a hanging bridge that is well worth the visit”. We followed his advice and we’re sure glad we did. Time is always of the essence so the video below is a good tell-all about our Yosemite adventure. Hope you like it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW28KMeotXI

If you watched the entire video you could be done with this blog. If you have time for more insight…read on.

We didn’t mention that the night before we landed at our campground we stayed at a Harvest Host just up the street. It was called the Yosemite Wine Tail. We stopped in right before closing and did a wine tasting with the owner (Colette) and her husband. They were gracious hosts. We had a lot of fun with them, got their local recommendations, bought some wine (cause you stay for free) and then retired to the parking lot where our Coach was parked. The next morning we had battery issues with the car which took us a couple hours to resolve before we did an early checking-in at the campground.

After the Wawona portion of our Yosemite adventure we took the hour drive to the Valley portion of the park. Basically, we split up the three day visits with our first day as a scenic drive with a stop-and-see. The second day, we took the bikes with us, which gave us some additional insight and added flexibility to our Valley second visit. And, the third day we took a 7.3 mile hike to Mariposa Grove to check out the giant Sequoius after taking a steam train ride around Sierra National Forest for an hour. We’ll let the following pictures, tell the story.

We will take any questions, now! Haha….thanks for following our journey and reading down this far. Peace, love and Soul Train…on to Napa and Sonoma Valley‘s next.

Thanks again, Kathy and Brad