We open our eyes and are immediately excited: today we will reach Yosemite National Park, a climbing Mecca since the Seventies, when crazy climbers came from all over the world and set one of the first hippy community, at the beginning of the great national parks era in America.
But for now we are still in Sequoita national park, an amazing place we want to enjoy up to the last second.
Not more then ten steps below our tent, this stunning place! And on the right, hidden in the forest, the campground
We don’t leave this wonderful park right away, there is still some road to drive before, in the almost totally loneliness of the morning. We drive the windy road, around the many beautiful meadows where the grass is easy as tall as your waist.
We stop so many times just for a photo or a quick walk in some place which seems more more interesting than the other, just waiting for a little bear to come out of the trees sooner or later!
One of the many meadows, still in the Sequoia National Park
We jump back on the car for the nth time, and then stop one more time. At once, we have almost decided to leave the car on go on walking – I’m joking, even if we would have the time it would be a dream to wander in these huge and majestic parks – then we finally reach the very first destination of today.
Too many time we are tempted to leave the car and go on walking
After a very windy road and an incredible amount of trees passed by, we reach the General Grant Grove, a corner of the little – but not less interesting – Kings Canyon National Park, almost totally closed due to the wild fires in the area.
We decide to take a break from the road and have a walk in this corner inhabited by wooden giants, first among the others the General Grant, this huge, wonderful tree, the second biggest in the world.
Hugged in a wooden sun burnt smelling tree, these are unforgettable sensations
We get onto the path which brings us to the General Grant and we surely don’t have time to get bored in the meanwhile: we walk inside a hollow trunk, fallen after a glorious and log life, now witness to the hugeness of these forest giants – we easily walk in it standing, it surely is bigger then some cubicle flat in town!
It’s a short but rich walk and we come back on our steps with our eyes full of wonder.
An awesome sign of the magnificence of these forests: to get in comparison with these wood giants is pretty awe-inspiring
In the end we are back at the car, driving agains our will to the civilizations. Since Kings Canyon Nationa Park is closed for the wild fires, we have to head towards Fresno, with its amazing 102°F, slightly less than 40°C, to turn around north bounded again after passing it, straight to Yosemite National Park!!!
We just have one stop, in an almost abandoned and very peculiar town, Coarsegold, where in the shadow of a building and refresh by a fresh air stream, we have a greasy tasty sandwich stuffed with everything.
We are in the heart of the Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, one of the best view point in the whole park
After a long driving afternoon, we finally enter the Yosemite National Park, a dream which come true – at the cheap, if we can say so, price of 30$ per week, anyway money well spent. We head first at the Visitor Center, a must-do we learnt – and for once, it is not really useful for the informations, but we have the occasion to meet some very curious and bizarre people – the we go immediately to the end of this valley, walk the few meters which divide the parking lot from the trail, almost running.
Yosemite Valley in its full majestic awesomeness of a warm september day, what else to ask for?
It’s a super quick walk, but the show at the end of it is really not to be missed: the forest, down in the vallet, towered by the massive Half Dome on the right, is totally wild…we would only want to throw a backpack on our shoulders and say goodbye to civilization for a couple of months, not ever walking twice the same path, and it could be done for real, if we just had the time!
Speechless, ravished by Yosemite charm – just the last in a long list of people victim of the spell of these awesome places – we walk back to the car to really go begin exploring this park: the Sentinel Dome is waiting for us, before our first night under Yosemite sky!
AP
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