Yosemite! Day 1 by Kenny & Kristen

We headed out on friday and made it to Sonora where we stayed the first night before driving in to the park. This is a super neat town to stay in and explore, but our main reason was to get supplies for camping and be close to the park the next morning to make the drive in. It's about an hour and a half from sonora to Yosemite Valley so we got up around 5am and headed in. The drive goes through some really pretty country and is a bit long. Once we got in the park, our first goal was to get a camping spot. We were aiming to get a spot at one of the first come first serve campgrounds and our first shot was to go to camp 4 within yosemite valley. But this is a tough one to get and pretty much if you are not in line by 5 am or earlier, there is a good chance you won't be getting a spot.(It's also a shared space campground so you won't really get any privacy either.) So after waiting in line for a bit we decided to take our chances and find another campground outside of the valley. We lucked out and was able to find a spot at Tamarac flats which was a nice campground, though it didn't have showers. So we pitched our tent and got things a bit settled before heading back into the valley to do some quick hiking before the day was over.  Once we made it back to the valley, the tough part starts - finding a parking space. If you get in the valley early, parking is no problem( around 7 or earlier). But as you wait, things fill up fast. We found that parking across from camp 4 actually had quite a lot of available parking. We then prepared our day bags and decided to hike up glacier point using the “four mile trail”. It was actually about 4.6 miles and 3200 ft of elevation gain. In true Kenny and Kristen fashion, we hiked the 8 hour trail in 4 (round trip). We enjoyed a great lunch at the top of glacier point which was excellent because we could get a great view of half dome as well as Nevada falls.  We were feeling pretty good about the hike and the day was pretty hot - conveniently we cross yosemite creek on the way back to the car and saw several folks swimming. The water looked so clear and so refreshing we couldn't contain ourselves, so we took a nice relaxing swim to rinse off and just relax for a bit. We also took a bit of a leap off the bridge because it looked so fun! After drying off a bit, we decided we needed to head back to our camp before it got to late so we could cook dinner.  So heading out of the park we made a quick stop to catch the sunset reflecting off all the stone surrounding the valley. There are a few things in the world that just make you stop and stare and Yosemite valley is one. One of my favorite views is the clear view you get right out of the tunnels - adequately called “Tunnel view”.  Once we got back to the camp, we made some solid silver turtles with Chicken, peppers and potatoes and for dessert we made some banana boats. We cleaned up our mess and hit the sack so we could get another full day of the valley.

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