I spent about a week at Yosemite Lakes Preserve Thousand Trail camp ground, about 5 miles from the Highway 120 entrance to Yosemite National Park. It took about 45 minutes to get into Yosemite Village - and there's no mass transit. But I've commuted longer, and it's a pretty drive :-)

I got to the campground at the edge of dark on Wednesday the 10th, so just picked a site and crashed. In daylight I found that it's a good campground, and that I lucked into a sparsely populated section (sparse because it's a long walk to the club house), which suits me fine. There are plenty of trees and a little creek, a clean laundry and a reasonable grocercy store just half a mile uphill. And most important: nice folks in charge. For example, if I'm online at 10 PM, instead of making me leave, they just "lock me in" and ask me to turn out the lights when I go. So I expect to be very happy here.

On Thursday, I got a late start, what with setting up camp and talking to neighbors and rangers, so I decided to just stop at the Yosemite Information center and get literature to help me plan the rest of my visit, then do some small hike near the entrance. That turned out to be the Merced Grove Trail which follows an old stage road and hightlights the local sequoia. As usual, I separated out the close up photos of flowers and such.

On Friday I drove all the way into Yosemite Village and parked at the first opportunity. I visited the Post Office to mail in my check for Feet Retreat, an autumn contradance weekend back in North Carolina. Then I visited various museums and ate some food I'd brought from my camper. At about 3 p.m., I took the bus to Stop #6 to see the Lower Yosemite Falls. It was over 2 miles from there to Mirror Lake, so I took the bus again to Stop #17 and had a lovely walk. Since the wooded path was closed (due to a recent rock slide), I stuck to the paved trail and was glad, since it ran right beside some great rapids. And then the lake and a trail beyond it were so pretty. On the way out of the park, I stopped at several overlooks but only took photos at Cascade Creek.

I decided to spend Saturday on chores and it turned out to be a good idea. A neighbor told me that they waited 30 minutes to get through the entrance and that everything was crowded - and that there were sudden thunderstorms all day long. So laundry and dishwashing turned out to be the right way to spend the day. I did walk around to get some photos of the campground.

Sunday was a big adventure, worthy of its own page.

The plan for Thursday June 18 was to hike to Upper Yosemite Falls, but thinking ahead to the dance weekend, I decided to do less climbing. I'll talk about and get photos for Bridalveil Falls and Vernal Falls posted... soon...

OK, Bridalveil Falls...

... and Vernal Falls...