Yosemite National Park

A couple weeks ago, May 1-3, Kade and I drove to Yosemite National Park in California. Because neither Kade nor I had ever been we thought this would be the perfect vacation before the busy summer months. As usual, I looked up all the information about the park and the best things to do and trails to hike. I also kept checking the weather because our trip relied heavily on good weather. We were not going to spend anytime wasted indoors. Up until the night before we were leaving weather.com showed partly cloudy or sunny with a high of 60. Thursday night I checked the weather once again just to make sure and sure enough it changed to 80% chance of rain on Saturday. Wonderful. We seriously considered canceling the hotel reservation and going another time. I checked out reservation and we were too late to cancel so we left the next morning.
On the way to Yosemite we stopped in Reno to do a little shopping. We continued on south through Carson City and into California. Our hotel was in Angels Camp, CA about 2 hours from Yosemite; any closer and there weren't really any hotels for us to stay in. Angels Camp was a small mountain town famous for its Frog Jumping contest, very weird. I read that it was made famous by one of Mark Twain's writings. Angels Camp was also surrounded by a lot of caves and caverns. The closest about 5 miles away was Moaning Caverns. Saturday morning we woke up to rainy conditions so we spent the morning taking the Moaning Caverns tour. The cavern was really deep and had a huge metal 100 year old staircase you had to climb up and down. The cave was pretty cool, but the staircase was scaring me.
Thankfully after taking the cave tour the rain had let up almost completely. So we started heading to Yosemite. By the time we got there it was barely sprinkling but it was extremely foggy. We didn't have much of a view of Yosemite driving in because of the fog but it stopped raining completely. We stopped in Yosemite Valley first to hike to Yosemite Falls. We couldn't believe the amount of water in the park. There was water everywhere! flooding the trails and blowing you over next to the waterfalls. It was a really pretty place. We even saw a couple taking their wedding pictures in front of another famous waterfall, Bridal Veil Falls.
After taking a few trails and driving around Yosemite Valley we started heading down to Mariposa Grove, the biggest collection of giant sequoia trees in the park. It was about a 45 minute drive with a spectacular view. The absolute best part of the park was the Tunnel View. Pulling into the full parking lot off the road, we stopped in front of the famous view of Yosemite Valley. It almost didn't seem real it was so beautiful. At that time I really wished I hadn't forgotten the battery to our digital camera because all we had was two disposable cameras to capture the view.
Mariposa Grove had huuuuge sequoia trees throughout the trail. We saw the grizzly giant, the California tunnel tree, the bachelor and three graces, and the loyal couple. We were trying to find the fallen tunnel tree (the one with old pictures of cars driving through it) but the signs were not very helpful and we got very confused. After a while, we started heading back to the parking lot. It was crazy how ginormous those trees were! The pictures do not do them justice.
Even with the rain the trip was great and the park was beautiful. I really hope to go back someday. Oh, and Kade and I celebrated our 3rd year anniversary right before the trip. It's crazy how time flies, it has already been three years??

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