So, the next day, because checkout was at 11 AM, and probably for no other reason, I actually did manage to get out of bed and after a noon breakfast, I headed toward Yosemite. It was 50 miles through windy twisty turns of Route 140 at 50 plus miles an hour with cliffs off to the side most of the time. Now, at various other times throught this trip, I have had no compunction about taking pictures while driving. However for the 50 miles from Mariposa to Yosemite, I kept both hands on the wheel at all times. I didn't even change the station on the radio. I had no desire to go flying off a cliff.
Once I entered Yosemite proper, I very quickly saw a big rock looking thing.
And a waterfall...
OK, so I'm lazy and haven't rotated the picture in photoshop. Turn your head sideways. And I'll remember not to turn the camera when I take pictures, because unless I'm opening it up anyway to do cropping and color correction and other fun stuff, I really don't want to mess with the pictures that come straight out of the camera. Not like it would take longer than a minute, but it would still be a pain.
Then after a bit and a stop at the Yosemite Village to buy some water and stuff, I saw the actual Yosemite Falls (turn your head again)...
This doesn't really look like it in the shot above which actually is only part of the falls (the bottom part), but Yosemite Falls is really tall. The poster at the bottom shows it being twice as tall as the tallest building in the world. So it is tall. Thus, of course, I decided to follow the five mile trail climbing the side of the mountain to get to the top of the waterfall.
Being in such great shape as I am, here is what I looked like after about twenty minutes of hiking up the steep rocky trail...
And here are what the trees looked like above me when I passed out...
But luckily, once I started pacing myself a bit better... meaning I went real slow and took freqent breaks to sit and read for a bit... I caught my second wind and kept on going. There were some amazing views of the neighboring mountains (sideways again)...
And of the valley below...
I made a higher resolution shot very similar to the one above which I may use as a background on my computer. Perhaps.
Along the way up there were also a variety of very cool looking plantlife...
And after a mile or two of walking, you round a bend and can see the waterfall again. I got the top part in the picture this time. (But sideways again.)
I ended up going up quite a ways, but I was also watching the time. I was pacing myself well and was energetic nd willing to continue hiking up the trail. I had already gone up about 700 vertical feet to about 5200 above sea level and hald walked at least three miles horizontally over the rocky trail... but the was probably about the same amount left before the top. From where I was you could look down on the platform seperating the upper and lower falls...
So that was something... but it wasn't the top. I wanted to go further. But I realized that it would take probably another 90 minutes for me to get to the top given the pace I was going at and the fact that the route was suppoosed to get much steeper before the top.
But I realized that if I did that, then I would be getting to the top just in time to make sure that at least half of the trip back down the mountain would be in the complete darkness of a moonless night. I did not want to be stumbling down a steep mountainside strewn with rocks, bolders, and cliffs right off the side of the trail without being able to see. That would be bad. So I turned around and started heading back down. On the way down, I noticed how I was looking almost straight down at the buildings below. It was a decent ways up!
So I finally got back to the bottom just as the sun was setting. It was time to leave the park. Of course, I had no idea where I'd be staying that night. I hoped in the car and started driving. I decided not to head back west to Mariposa or south to Fresno. Instead I started heading east toward Nevada. On the way, there were still some very nice night views.
Without changing the color balance this one is a bit dark looking at it on the web here, but on my TV screen or on the monitor on the camera I really love how that one turned out. It is just very cool. I could lighten the picture above up a bit so you can see the reflection in the car t and get the full effect, but once again, I am lazy. If you want to see it, turn up the brightness on your monitor. I'm actually pretty annoyed at myself for not having done this one in high resolution. It is my favorite picture I took the whole time. (When not looked at with a high gamma monitor like most Windows machines.)
In any case, it was a long way going east... twisty mountain roads... dark... definately fun driving. After finally exiting the east side of the park, I started going through small towns. All the motels were full. No place to stay. After several more towns, I started seeing a couple places that looked like they might have vacancies. ut they looked pretty scary. One of them had the front office to the motel located in the bar next door. No thanks. I kept driving.
Eventually I entered Nevada. I could tell, because five feet across the border, there was a casino. I did not stop at the casino. Or at the five or six other casinos I passed. There may have berooms at those places, but once again, I kinda wanted a name I recognized. I ended up driving at the way to Carson City Nevada before finally picking a place. I found a Days Inn that had a vacancy. They had one room left. It was a smoking room. It was 2 AM. I didn't want to keep driving too much longer. How bad could it be? I took it.
I ended up sleeping wearing an extra tshirt covering my head trying to block the extremely pungent odor of smoke. I also opend all the windows and turned the fan on the AC to max. But my eyes were still getting red and watery within thirty minutes of arriving in the room. But somehow I managed to sleep.