Yosemite in Winter

We live in a place with no snow.  If you're shoveling snow, that probably sounds like a great idea, but it's been raining for weeks and we needed a little winter wonderland.  So we headed for Yosemite...

It was like being in an Ansel Adams photo.  Compete with wildlife...

Our friends were in the Bracebridge Dinner, a medieval pageant and feast.   And the Ahwahnee was warm and cosy. 

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Winter Wonderland

The sun was blazing when we got to Yosemite, the granite sparkling in the afternoon light, bits of snow clinging to the ridges and wrinkles.

Rain was forecast for the next day, so we hiked to mirror lake...and around the valley.  Crisp, fragrant, almost empty.  No shouts echoing off the granite walls, no cars.  A pair of Acorn woodpeckers scolded us as we walked past the nest they were building.  A Stellar Jay screeched and followed us, hopping and stropping his beak on the branches.

Mirror Lake is a dry sandy wasteland for most of the year.  It's silting in, becoming a meadow.  

But not yet.

I love this old hotel.  The Ahwahnee dining room.

With deer just outside the windows.

The kids romping on the lawn at sunset, making memories.  

Some day, when I am just a memory, these kids will be here with their kids, watching them practice somersaults.

We went to bed with the rain hammering on the roof.  Half way thru the night it got eerily quiet.  In the morning we knew why - 

We went to sleep in a rainstorm and woke up in a postcard.

Half dome wore a cape of clouds:

Mist, magic.  

Yosemite Falls looked like a Bierstadt painting:

And then it started to melt:

And we got really wet.  

By noon you'd never know there'd been snow.  But we will remember the winter wonderland that was.

Fall into Yosemite

It's fall in Yosemite. Morning mists rise from the golf course at Wawona,

deer feed in the meadows, unafraid. 

Either it's not hunting season or they know they're in a national park - the best national park. Wawona Hotel is a throwback: wide porches...

...and lovely cottages. 

Old fashioned, charming, recently updated. Get a room with a bath or share with really good friends. 

The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias is close by...

... and you can't comprehend how enormous these trees are until you see people standing on a fallen tree.

The leaves will be at their best this weekend - the last of October. Go now, before the snow falls, while the dogwoods are still bright red and the poplars are shaking their gold onto the river. And it's not crowded. 

What are you waiting for?

It's a weird and wonderful place...

Helicopters chasing the moon over Glacier Point...

...clouds chasing each other across the sky.

It's a weird and wonderful place, Yosemite.