„Half Dome“, but full enthusiasm - Yosemite National Park in California

One fantastic experience followed the next yesterday. First thing in the morning, with breakfast not yet fully digested, the Golden Gate appeared in a band of clouds (see separate blog post).

Because we knew that the rest of the day would bring fantastic images as well, we divided the day into two blog posts (otherwise, one would overshadow the other's highlight...)

By 3 p.m., we had reached Yosemite National Park. The visit there had not been confirmed until a few days ago. The road to Glacier Point, which we wanted to drive within the park, had only been reopened two days prior. The eastern entrance to the park via Tioga Pass is still closed today. The road is still impassable due to large amounts of snow. It sounds crazy, but we had temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius today, and there's still snow blocking the road there...

But well, it is what it is, and we were glad that we could enter the park and especially reach Glacier Point, because from there you have the best view of Half Dome, our highlight in the park.

As is ubiquitous in the other national parks we have visited so far, there is a huge shortage of parking spaces here as well. Way too few parking lots for visitors, even though there weren't even that many cars. In addition, there is an incomprehensible road layout with many closed roads... For example, we couldn't even reach the visitor center by car. We would have had to take a longer walk. We didn't want to do that in 40-degree heat. Our goal was to get a magnet from the park - and we got one at a gift shop.

The park was populated with countless campers living in organized tent villages. We couldn't help but wonder how they can endure the heat in the tents with several people when the temperatures outside are between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius. No, there is no air conditioning in the tent. And the prices for campers are not cheap either. But, not our problem...

Driving through the park took us to the places we definitely wanted to see: El Capitan and Half Dome. When we looked at El Capitan, we inevitably thought of the Oscar-winning film "Free Solo" that we saw a while ago, which gave us sweaty hands while watching. In 2017, extreme climber Alex Honnold was the first person ever to conquer the nearly 1,000-meter-high vertical granite wall using only his fingers/hands and feet, without any aids, and did it in less than 4 hours. It took 46 days with equipment for the first attempt to climb El Capitan. That was a few decades ago, but still... from 46 days to 4 hours. ... You can watch the film on YouTube. It's worth it!

As the final part of our visit, we went to Glacier Point to enjoy a full view of Half Dome. Simply an amazing view. The pictures explain it all...

By the way, the fire/smoke that you can see on the left side of the panorama image was ignited by a lightning strike 14 days ago. The controlled fire is now the responsibility of the rangers.