This weekend Rags, Deepu and Rags Friend Kranthi and myself went on a trip to Yosemite national park. It was a 4hr drive from Bay Area. Yosemite is the first national park in the US established in the 1800s.
We started at 7AM and picked up the others. Around 10PM we saw a beautiful reservoir by the freeway - 152 - the San Luis Reservoir. There was a small side road to it, and we went on it and stopped there. It was very beautiful. However we could not stay for long as that would cut down on the time in Yosemite.
We arrived at the Yosemite Southern entrance from Freeway 41. Just after entering, we saw the Mariposa Grove closed to traffic, and covered with snow. We parked our car there and started walking on the Mariposa Grove for some time. We could not reach the grove itself and turned back after sometime, but it was my first experience with touching snow :)
After that we went to the Yosemite valley. The mountains around were majestic. We also got down by the side of the road and climbed down on rocks, almost 1 km downhill. From there we had a nice view of the waterfalls. Later we went to the Yosemite store in the valley and bought a cake to eat, as there was no other food available :)) Then we stopped by the side of the Merced river, where there was lots of people with grills and other stuff enjoying in the pleasant weather. By 4:00PM we started back by I120. The roads were under construction so we had to stop for almost 15 mins since only one lane was open.
Overall it was a very nice trip. I plan to visit it once again in the future and this time try to make a night stay at Yosemite to explore the valley completely. I have heard that camping here is so popular that they open these camp sites for reservation almost an year in advance, only to have them gobbled up in a few hours.
