Beautiful Yosemite National Park

This weekend I decided to go to Yosemite National Park, despite predicted rain and 45 degree Fahrenheit weather hoping that the weather guy was wrong again. I was partially correct. While it sprinkled on the drive there in the morning, the weather held up during the afternoon when I did most of hiking.

Yosemite is a unique place. The park is extremely popular, and many people come here from not only all over the country, but from the world. You can hear different languages and see license plates from many states. At the same time, if you know where to go, you can feel completely alone and isolated from civilization to the point where you feel eerie.

Some places in Yosemite attract lots of tourists. One of them is Bridalveil Falls. Since it has been so rainy in California this year, the falls were overflowing with water spilling it over everywhere, flooding the trails.

It was almost impossible to actually get to the falls because of spillage. But the experience of getting soaked through was unbelievable.

Trying to warm up in the car afterwards, we headed to the Mirror Lake trail, or so we thought...

Mirror Lake is a small body of water and is surrounded by a nice trail with beautiful views of the lake and surrounding nature. This is the hike my friend and I were hoping to go on. Instead of beginning at the Mirror Lake trailhead, as the instructions on the Yosemite NP website advise, we decided to park at Yosemite Valley. It was not the best choice, as we learned later because everyone else decided to park there as well.

The idea was to just hike 2 miles from the trailhead and come right back, but since we parked so far away and did not want to take the shuttle (bad idea), we hiked over 10 miles round trip. It was completely worth it though.

We were so tired that as soon as we got back home, we went to sleep. Actually, I snagged a nap in the car, while my friend was driving ;)