Now with a functional car with all wheels and no need to drive at low speed we went for a celebratory sandwich. Once we had eaten we sort out our gear and headed into Yosemite.
It was pretty late in the day so we headed straight in as quickly as the crazy roads would safely allow. We thought about heading up to Mariposa Grove where a load of really old redwoods were but the car park was full and time was short so we went straight into the park. We first headed up to Glacier point which is a lookout over the whole of the Yosemite valley. On the way up we stopped a bit before the peak to check out the views.
There were some really spectacular views of the mountains and we spent a while taking photos. We also saw a deer which came out of the woods. Once that had toddled off we went on to Glacier point. There was a nice walk up to the high point which looked over the whole valley. The views were pretty good if a little obscured by smoke. There were some pretty bad fires in the area that were blanketing the valley in smoke. We took some more photos then headed into the valley.
On the way down we got a look at the fires across the valley that had caused our detour yesterday. A lot of area was burning and you could see the helicopter dumping water on the fire. It was filling the valley with smoke and was obviously covering a huge area of the forest. This was apparently a planned fire that got out of hand, the forests Sequoia trees need fire as part of their life cycle so the forestry people did manage burns to maintain the forest. This one just got a little out of control.
We headed into the valley as the sun was beginning to get low in the sky. We stopped at the bridalveil falls one of the many water falls in the valley. It was a short walk into the forest to see this very impressively tall water fall plummeting from the high points of the valley some 188 meters. It's apparently rated 431 in term of height in the world ... amazing what you can discover on wikipedia.
We took regular stops on the one way loop through the park looking at the impressive geography. What was not so nice was the number of small flies that would swarm around us when ever we stopped. As the sun set we stopped in the valley which had some great views. It also had a herd of deer who had settled into a meadow for the evening just their heads and antlers poking out over the grasses. As it got dark we took some more pictures then got in the car and headed back out of the now dark valley.
As we drove up out of the valley we could see the fires now that it was dark we stopped to take some pictures of the forest ablaze. In the dark you could see the area that was on fire which was quite large.
It was getting a bit late by then so we headed out of the park, some driving around later we were out of the park and stopping at the local supermarket for some supplies.
We had some beers some lasagne and some crisps all while watching the new rambo film probably the most unnecessary gratuitous film I've seen. All the enemies appeared to be not people but actually very light thin gelatine bags filled with jam. So a single shot from a gun caused them to fly across the room and spray jam everywhere.
Tomorrow we head over to Monterey so naturally we stayed up late.
