The title says it all. Last year in September, I took a road trip to Yosemite with some friends. Now half a year later, I have finally found some time and motivation to write about it.

The trip itself was a long overdue one. Ever since I moved to LA in 2015, I’ve been dying to pay the infamous national park a visit. For some reason, I’ve found a chance to visit Arizona and Utah before I even got to visit the park in my own state. When my schedule cleared up over labor day weekend, I knew I had to go to Yosemite.

Early Saturday morning, we set off in two cars towards Yosemite. Since it was a holiday weekend, I figured traffic at the main entrance would be a total nightmare, why is why we decided to enter from the east entrance that is closer to Mammoth Lakes. Below is an obligatory shot out my car window, speeding down N-395.

As we got onto Highway 125 that led us straight into the national park, we got news that our friends in the other car accidentally set their GPS towards the main entrance. So for the rest of the day, my friend Nicole and I explored on our own.

Here’s Yosemite at first sight. We were so excited we couldn’t even wait to pay to drive inside the park to jump out of the car. We pulled up to the side of the road just before the entrance and ran towards the vast amount of land to get a breathe of clean air and a view of the surrounding landscape.

After we sat on the grass for a while, mesmerized by the refreshing scenery, we got back onto the car and drove into the park. The entrance fee is $30 as usual, and surprisingly, there was no line at the Tioga Pass (east) entrance!

We drove along the windy Tioga Road and stopped at a few scenic turnabouts before we parked next to the Tuolumne Meadows for a walk. There is only one major trail that you can’t possibly miss that will take you around the meadows. Even though it was certainly a busy weekend at the park, we barely saw anyone else wandering around the flat lands. In fact, we even got to see some wild deers roaming around! (although you would know I have mixed feelings about deers if you’ve read my previous posts…)

We kept driving down the road, just admiring the view, before we saw a huge granite dome of the side of the street. Nicole pointed out that there seems to be people standing on the dome, which we took as a challenge to conquer the dome. We later found out that the dome is named Pothole dome, and that to climb onto the summit, you simply walk onto the massive stone by foot, with no paths of guidance whatsoever. It might seem quite scary at first, but as soon as you step foot onto the dome, you’ll realise that the surface is very easy to grip. It took us a mere 20 minutes to climb to the top, which had a spectacular view of the meadows.

At this point, sunset was just about an hour away and our friends were unfortunately still trapped in traffic at the Yosemite Valley. Nicole and I decided we would keep driving westbound in hopes that we would run into our friends at some point.

It was a beautiful coincidence that we reached Olmsted Point just as the sky started to change in color. Already exhausted from the walking, running and hiking we’ve done, we were hesitant to climb to the top of the hill which seemed a little steep. But oh am I glad that we did. The hike took us just 15 minutes, and I got to see one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever witnessed in my life.

I was in so much awe that I might have taken 500 photos in just 20 minutes or so. It was so utterly beautiful I just wanted to capture the moment to the best of my ability. Looking back, although it was half a year ago, I still remember every bit of that sunset as clear as it was yesterday. Everything was picture perfect.

xx

– vivian