Yosemite National Park
After a month in National Parks you start to wonder whether there can be still something new or surprising. And then it turns out each park is different and each one is unique.
Yosemite is on Unesco World Heritage list and every year receives around 4 million visitors. You can feel this – yes, there are crowds and all languages of the world in the visitor center. Our neighbours on the camping told us that they booked their site 6 months in advance and we (again) were just lucky to snatch a site just a few days before. Yosemite is also the most “industrialized” National Park so far. There is a hotel, cabins, buses, a pool, a big supermarket, a bar, gluten-free lattes, medical clinic, post office, a courthouse and even… yes, mobile internet access. Yosemite Valley is just a tiny part of the park and yet there are so many things to do here – bicycles, kayaks, rafting, treks, trips for old people and hardcore trekkers, rock climbing. You can keep yourself busy from dawn till dusk and still you need time to just lie in a hammock or sit by a campfire.
We enter the valley through a tunnel and right after passing it we stop at the viewpoint. Seeing the whole valley, again I do not know what to say. Despite all the business around you the nature is overwhelming. A land of bears and waterfalls. There are moments in this trip when I can hardly believe it is for real and I am simply lost for words. Even though sometimes we are super-tired and fed up with one another, even though sometimes we argue, I know I will remember only moments like this one – a view of the whole valley or my heart pounding when we spotted a bear on the trail.