Week 13: An Unforgettable Week in the Impressive Yosemite Valley

We spent our last week before heading home for a bit in Yosemite National Park. We both agreed Yosemite was our favorite National Park we’ve visited thus far on the trip. I personally think it is tied with Zion for my favorite National Park I’ve visited. It is a gorgeous and very impressive park. If you’ve never been to Yosemite, it is a very large park, but the majority of the popular hiking trails and things to see are located in Yosemite Valley which is where we spent most of our time.

On Saturday, we had made the drive from Sequoia and Kings Canyon to Yosemite. There were several cancellations that weekend at the campgrounds in the Valley so we had booked those campsites last minute. We quickly realized why people were cancelling their stays as that afternoon and evening it was very rainy and cold. We made it to our campsite that afternoon and it was lightly raining at the time. We had hoped to do some longer hikes while there, but didn’t feel like they would be very enjoyable in the rain. We eventually decided we would do a two mile hike to Mirror Lake. It was a very wet and cold hike. The rain got harder as the hike went on. The temperature probably dropped about 10 degrees and had started snowing near the end. We were absolutely soaked down to our underwear! When we made it back to the van we set up our shower and hung all of our wet clothes and put our wet shoes in the shower to try to dry. Due to the tree coverage at our campsite we weren’t able to use our Starlink. Trevor was hoping to watch the Columbus Crew game so we spent the evening by the Visitor Center where we had service so that he could watch the game.

Sunday was still a very wet day. It was sunny but the ground was still very wet and snow was melting from the night before. We decided it still probably wasn’t a good idea to do some of the longer hikes we had picked out. Instead, we went to see some of the waterfalls and do some shorter hikes. We were told that May is a great time to visit Yosemite because the waterfalls are in full force. All of the waterfalls are fed by snow melt so by the end of the summer and into fall the waterfalls don’t even exist. We went to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. We also drove the loop around Yosemite Valley and hiked the Meadow Trail. We headed back to our campsite in the evening and had a campfire.

Monday morning we woke up and drove about an hour to the Stanislaus National Forest, just outside the border of the park, to an area with dispersed camping. We found a nice flat spot where we were able to get solar and our Starlink was able to connect. We are learning now that we’re not spending as much time in the desert that we have to be a lot more mindful about where we camp. Any bit of tree coverage really hinders our ability to get solar and for our Starlink to connect to satellites. We spent Monday through Friday at this spot while we worked all week. We needed to catch up on work from the week before and wanted to get ahead on some things before we headed home.

One evening we decided to watch the documentary Free Solo. One of the well-known landmarks in Yosemite is El Capitan. This is a 3,000 ft granite wall that attracts a lot of rock climbers. Free Solo is the story of Alex Hannold, the only person so far to have free solo climbed El Capitan. Free solo climbing means that he didn’t have any ropes or harnesses with him. The whole time we were watching the documentary we were just in shock that someone would do this. Simply climbing El Capitan, with ropes and harnesses, is a feat in and of itself. It takes climbers an average of 5-6 days to climb the wall. They sleep on a little cot that just hangs off the wall. When Alex Hannold free solo climbed El Capitan, he completed it in 3 hours and 56 minutes. CRAZY!

Saturday morning, we woke up early and headed back to Yosemite Valley. Thankfully, we were able to snag another campsite in the valley for Saturday night. We decided to do one of our longer hikes since it was a nice day. We completed the hike to Upper Yosemite Falls. It was supposedly a 7 mile hike with over 3,000 ft of elevation gain, but when we tracked the hike it was more like 8 miles. In my opinion this was the most difficult hike we have done yet. Yosemite Valley starts at about 4000 ft of elevation so we climbed to about 7000 ft of elevation. We definitely were not very acclimated to the elevation change and were feeling the effects of the thinner air. It was a very steep climb the entire way and I had to take many, many breaks along the way. We eventually reached the top and had very impressive views of the whole valley and the waterfall. The hike down was definitely easier than the hike up, but was still pretty difficult. Since it was so steep, our legs still had to work pretty hard to stabilize us. We both had very fatigued and shaky legs by the end. After the hike, we headed back to the Visitor Center so that Trevor could watch another Crew game. We were planning to leave the park Sunday morning but we had a huge pile of laundry we wanted to get done at the laundromat there in Yosemite. So we decided we would do the laundry and then go pick up some pizza for dinner. We didn’t finish our laundry until around 9 P.M. so were very, very hungry when we went to get pizza. Unfortunately, when we reached the pizza place the line was super long. We didn’t end up eating our pizza until 10:30 that night. But thankfully, it was delicious!

We had hoped to do one last trail to Vernal Falls on Sunday morning, but we couldn’t find any parking near the trailhead so decided not to do it. Instead we stopped near El Capitan on our way out and hiked up to the base of the wall. We were able to see a few people climbing above us.

Our flight home was booked for Tuesday night from Las Vegas so we had about a 9 hour drive from Yosemite to Vegas. We decided to split up the drive a bit so on Sunday we drove about six hours south back to one of our favorite free camping spots at Sawtooth Canyon where we stayed between LA and Death Valley. We arrived just at sunset on Sunday evening. Monday we spent the day working, packing, and getting ready to leave the van. Tuesday after work, we drove three hours to finish the drive to Las Vegas. Our flight left at 11 P.M. so we got there around 8. We landed around 6 a.m. EST on Wednesday morning with very little sleep, but we were so excited to be home.

We have so enjoyed our few days at home already. It is a much needed break from the every-day stressors of vanlife. We’ve enjoyed time with family, yummy food, long hot showers, flushing toilets, limitless water, and so many other luxuries. There’s no place like home ❤️