Yosemite (March 2017)

After living here for about a year, Josh and I finally visited Yosemite. Firstly, how to pronounce it. Lots of people pronounce it as “Yo-ser-might” however just so you know, Americans pronounce it as “Yo-sey-mee-tee”. Little bit of information there for you. Josh and I visited Yosemite in honour of Vicki and Steve’s visit. The drive from Oakland (where we live) is about 3 hours and when we first started out, the weather was shocking.

So up until recently, California was suffering one of their worst droughts ever. However over the last 2-3 months, there has been an unbelievable amount of rain. This has been very depressing for Josh and I and the only way I could cope trudging through water everyday to the train station was to buy very expensive and very fashionable gumboots. However, because of all the rain, now everywhere you look, it is fabulously green.

Since I was the passenger, along the way I got to take some pretty pictures.

Okay, so when you go to a national park like Yosemite, you think lots of green trees and nice lovely hikes. However, as we got closer, things took a decidedly icy turn.

Yeah, so it turns out that during winter, there are parts of California that get snow. The closer we got, the more snow there was.

Brrrr!!! After 3 hours of Josh driving (thanks Josh!), we finally pulled into our accommodation at Rush Creek Lodge.

The snow was incredible. It was so powder soft and because we weren’t in the skiing area of the mountain, there were just these huge areas with completely pristine untouched snow. Josh decided he needed a first-hand “face” experience with it.

I guess the only way to do that is to dive into it. When he came out of it however, there were some regrets.

Once we dusted Josh off, we decided to explore our lodgings. That’s when we found the pool!

Unsurprisingly, it was empty but look at all that snow!!! Even the normal sitting areas were completely covered.

On our travels, we found some snowmen which we quickly commandeered into a photo.

So, from here we decided to get back into the car and drive closer toward the National Park for more sightseeing. Parts of the road were really snowy so we(Josh and Steve) put snow chains on.

In hindsight, we probably should have rented a more rugged vehicle. Ah well, we made it back in one piece. We began driving toward O’Shannessy Dam. The drive there was amazing.

The drive to the dam was a little longer than we expected but totally worth it.

It was simply magnificently. Now of course, no snow day is ever complete without a snow angel!

After this high note, we decided to end our sightseeing and head back to the lodge for dinner. It was an amazing day. Considering how easy it was to drive there, Josh and I will definitely head back in the summer.

Talk soon,

Sim (& Josh).