Granite, Grizzlies and Groves

Over mountains, through deserts and some desserts, with much excitement, we have finally arrived at one of the most anticipated National Parks that I had yet to visit, Yosemite National Park. Granted, you're probably not as excited as I was to arrive, since, well, you were not there. So we'll skip the sermon for today and take you right to the campground where we were greeted with this friendly reminder...
...beware of bears! While the statistics don't seem that alarming, realize that most of the campgrounds opened the weekend before and the sign had not been updated for about 4 weeks! As a side note, Yosemite literally means "those who kill", but those were the feared Indians, not the bears.
Entering from the South, we started at the Mariposa Grove, featuring more of the...
...giant...

...sequoia trees seen in the previous post. Compared to the people at the base...

...like Fritz...

...these trees were just plain massive. Here's a shot looking up from the base. Despite the damage at the bottom, the wide base diameters provide an excellent support structure for the voluminous trees.
The largest grizzly of them all.
In the last post you saw pictures of us driving through a fallen tree. Well they used to allow vehicles to drive through...
...these live trees, well, when kids weren't doing handstands, of course. If you are not sure which guy is the tough guy...
...hey, you try doing that while I watch. I know, I'm sure you are as impressed as the others in the picture.
Meanwhile, Fritz was taking pretty pictures of flowers so we would have something more soothing to show our Mothers.
Along with this soothing pose at the base of a giant sequoia.
From Mariposa grove, we headed north on Wawona Road (you gotta love the names) and over to Glacier Point Road. After a short little hike across the snow on to Sentinel Dome, we were rewarded with this view of Yosemite Falls from 8,000 feet.
Oh, and this view too.

Zooming in on Upper Yosemite Falls...

...followed by Lower Yosemite Falls...
There's half dome with either Vernal or Nevada Falls to the right.
Since you're probably wondering what we're thinking, let me tell you. "Wow! This 270 degree view with raging waterfalls, stellar granite cliffs and snow capped mountains all around was created for our pleasure. What did we do to deserve this and how long can we stay?" Not long enough would be the answer, so while we were there, I took plenty of pictures with hopes that I could some how describe the beauty God created for us.
Another view of half dome rising above everything else, despite missing it's other half!
If I have my geography correct, we are looking Northeast across the Sierra Mountains separating California and Nevada.
The Yosemite Valley floor just below us and where we'll be in the next blog snapping lots of pictures as we climb up the left side of Yosemite Falls!
Glacier Point, looking across Yosemite Valley at Half Dome...
...along with full-dome Fritz.
Hanging out for sunset, we were treated with a very animated ranger talk describing everything around until he was interrupted by...
...sunset...
...with beautiful views all around. You can still see Yosemite Falls on the right.
One last picture as the sun set after our first few hours at Yosemite. But rest assured, there are more pictures of waterfalls, the astounding granite cliffs and some really neat starry night shots coming to a blog, really close to this one capturing the adventures of the next two days. I get excited just thinking about it again!