Sunday, April 18, 2010
Couple hour drive to Yosemite today. More beautiful slow twisty turning roads in park that were just incredible. Much more crowded though. Tried to get a room at the nice lodge in park but it was booked. Found something over the phone in El Portal which was on our way out tonight. Having someplace to stay figured out, we parked bike, changed out of motorcycle gear in a somewhat empty grass parking lot. We locked what we could in our hard cases and shoved our boots under rear fender above rear wheel to get them out of sight. Walked to Visitors Center to find out where we could do a small hike. I'm a little offended that park employee there recommended such a lame hike for us.It was pretty much wide open in between high traffic roads, that gave pretty much the same views you could turn your head and see from visitors center. We found one that took us to the bottom of the lower Yosemite Falls. We just by accident came to the park at the perfect time of year. Spring snow melt made the falls as beautiful as they can get! You could feel the air get colder as you walked near them and you definitely got sprayed at the bottom of them. Walking back to where we could catch a shuttle (which were real nice and everywhere, kept a lot of cars from driving around park and in kept them in parking lots) we saw a bunch of people off trail and shooting pics of something in a grassy field. BEAR! I grabbed camera, tightrope walked a big tree across creek, and got a few pics. I was probably 10 yards away. A lot of these people must be used to them because they were closer and not very concerned. As we left a ranger pulled right up in the grass by it and we couldn't see if she was going to move the people out , bear out, or just watch. Shuttle back to lot where everything was just as we left it on the bikes. Beautiful wooded ride out along roaring boulder filled river that was the motorcyclists dream! One of sooo many this trip (scenery and weather). Its really a lot to process in between figuring out routes, where to stay, posting, uploading pics, posting pics, editing video, uploading and saving video, posting video. These next couple days when we have just highway to do and pics and video will dwindle, it will I'm sure set in.