Yosemite - Raging, Awesome and Spectacular

Our first day at Yosemite was breathtaking in more ways than one.  Tim said we would round a turn and then the valley would just open up before us -- we did and it was inspiring and it begged you to stop anywhere and everywhere you could along the road to look in awe at what lay before us.

 

Since Tim had been here a couple times before, he knew how special this visit was as the waters everywhere were raging torrents and little creeks such as Cascade Creek became special stops along the way just to gasp at what we and others were seeing.

As we approached the valley below, traffic was halted for construction at the busy intersection by the river but, it was well worth the wait and time was not wasted as we could walk around the cars and gather views and pictures of the scenery nearby -- Bridal Veil Falls and Half Dome beckoned in the distance.  When we did finally get to the bottom of the valley, the stream next to the road was a raging torrent and it begged for some white water rafters to come down -- guess it's not allowed though.

Our first stop came at Bridal Veil Falls and our hike from the road fell short of actually reaching the bottom of the falls because the mist cloud was so huge and overwhelming from the amount of water coming over the falls -- it turned the asphalt path into a small stream and if you didn't have an umbrella you would have gotten a really cold shower (some people did even with umbrellas).

We then decided to drive farther on and stopped at the roadside in view of El Capitan before heading over toward Yosemite Falls where we parked and hiked around the valley.  First, we stopped at the side of the stream and ate some lunch before hiking around.  We made it to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls and even there the cloud of mist drenched most people. Tim went beyond some of the lower rocks but, soon discovered the water to be too high and stopped him from further discovery -- areas he had previously been in other visits.

After some hours of hiking and just looking at the beautiful scenery, we headed back out of the valley but, made another stop off the roadway near the base of El Capitan and hiked a short distance in to get closer pictures of the famous cliff that many mountaineers seek to climb.  Saw a few of those mountaineers in the parking area we pulled in and after looking through our binoculars we located some of the mountaineers working their way up the cliffs in three or four distinctly different areas of the giant rock.

Can you see them?