Our last morning at the Airbnb. While it was a beautiful home and location in the small area twenty miles outside of Mariposa called Jerseydale, it was just so far removed from the park. We did a lot of driving. Granted, there was not a lot of options that were so reasonably priced closer to Yosemite National Park.
If you go, you will have to balance proximity with price as well as the amount of time you will spend driving each day (along with the price of gas).
Our destination today was Bass Lake via Yosemite and Glacier Point. We would drive the Wawonah road toward the South Entrance/Exit.
We slept in a little and did not leave the Airbnb until 8:30 am.
The drawback to sleeping in? We had to wait at the entrance for about 40 minutes in a long line of cars. Getting up early was totally worth the effort.
Our first stop was to exchange a t-shirt for Chris.
Then on to our adventures for the rest of the day.
Road 41 veered off the Yosemite valley road and took us up above the valley floor to our first stop at Valley View and Tunnel View. As the name suggests, we were up high enough to see the mighty mountains and waterfalls of the park.
The parking lot was pretty busy, but people weren't staying too long once they had a look and had snapped a few pictures.
We got our first glimpse at Bridal Veil Falls (on the right side of the photo). The area around the waterfall was currently under construction and closed to tourist traffic. You can see Half Dome in the distance (middle of the picture).
After taking our pictures, we continued on through the longest highway tunnel in California. It was 0.8 mile long. Kristen had a habit of holding her breath through tunnels. She gave up on this one.
We drove to the Glacier Point exit at Chinquapin and turned left onto Glacier Point Road. The road followed a windy path for 16 miles at approximately 35 mph.
Glacier Point offered an outstanding view of Vernal and Nevada Falls. Kind of cool knowing that we had hiked to the top of those falls. You could see the zigzagging path as it wound up the side of the mountain. Half Dome loomed big in front of us.
There were no picnic tables at Glacier Point so we drove to a smaller overlook and sat on the back of the car and on logs to enjoy our lunch in the shade.
The hike that Chris had picked for the day skirted from the parking lot to Sentinel Dome and around the mountainside to reach Taft Point. If you chose not to hike the full loop, you could hike 1.1 miles to Taft Point in one direction or 1.1 miles to Sentinel Dome in the other direction. Our hike was about 5.5 miles for the full loop.
When we reached Sentinel Dome, Chris and Kristen hiked to the top. I opted to wait in the shade.
The loop took us past a huge cell tower. No wonder cell service was so much better out of the Yosemite valley. We had great service on the side of the mountain.
Taft Point offers tremendous views much like Glacier Point but without the guard rails. Be careful. You'll know pretty quickly how to answer the question, "Am I afraid of heights or not?"
If you chose only to hike to Taft Point from the parking lot, it would be 2.2 miles round trip with a fairly minor elevation gain.
If you are brave, you can walk right up to edge of the cliffs and look down into the valley below.
We were looking straight down on El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. The wind was blowing in the valley and the water of the falls was obviously blowing. We could see the hike that led to the top of Yosemite Falls. It did not look fun at all.
Taft Point is characterized by large fissures in the rock with tremendous depth. I love this description of the Point: "The drop off at Taft Point is steep, and a fall would be not just fatal, but squish-you-like-a-bug fatal. The fall is so far that your friends, waving their teary goodbyes and hoping you didn't have the only set of car keys, would lose sight of you before you reached the ground. So be careful." Yosemite Hikes
As we made our final exit of the park past the Wawona Visitor Center, we opted to skip the Mariposa Grove—another grove of sequoia trees. Kristen had seen all that she wanted to see of the sequoias.
Chris made a quick stop for me at Clark's Station where I spied an old covered bridge. I hopped out and captured a few pictures and then we drove on to Oakhurst (close to Bass Lake).
We stopped for dinner at Round Table Pizza and then for a few more groceries at Von's. The sun was beginning to set, but we took a brief tour around the resort and then retired for a much needed rest. We hiked 7 hikes in the past five days!