Goodbye Yosemite!

In this picture, you can see El Capitan over Kris' head! Many movies and commercials are filmed here. The latest was the one with the lady rock-climbing when her cell phone rings. Her bank is letting her know she is almost overdrawn. That is here at El Capitan. I can't imagine any climbing these cliffs. They are sheer walls.

What an adventure these last few days have been. We grew and learned from this experience; and it turned out to be a very good one indeed. Tonight we are in Winnemucca, Nevada and the drive here was breathtaking. So much Snow! It was unbelievable. Many of the snow drifts were taller than our bus. Tomorrow we leave very early (7:00 a.m.) to drive to Snowbird, UT. Aesculap has a meeting there that Ted was encouraged to attend when we were at AAOS. That is fine with us because we plan to put the kids in Ski School and ski for a couple of days.

Victory! And it was worth the walk.

These trees were amazing. The ranger said their roots can grow 50 feet out from the tree. Never have I imagined something so amazing. These are the very big trees, but all around this area are exceptionally tall and wide trees. On the LONG walk back, we entertained ourselves by pretending we were in Narnia. This is what it seemed like!

Ever-ready bunny to the rescue!

We were prepared. We had waterproof hiking boots on and layers of cloths (which we quickly shed off), sunglasses, and determination. But before we were even TO the grove, the kids started to poop out. Poor Evan was just on a heap on the ground. So sweet Ted scooped him up and carried him much of the way up. The walk down was much easier.

Put this in the "what were we thinking" category!

OK, here is what happened. We wanted to see the giant redwoods in Yosemite and learned it was about a 45 minute drive. We drove out there through curvy, slow roads only to find that the road to the grove of trees was snowed in and closed. If we wanted to see them, we would need to walk the 2 1/2 miles there and 2 1/2 miles back, up hill...in the deep snow. We were up for a challenge and all saw the most snow we have ever seen! (notice I am standing at the top of this standard street sign!)

Yosemite

We only stayed five minutes from the park so it was very convenient to spend the day at Yosemite. We had a wonderful time. They had a snow storm here three weeks ago and we were fascinated by the process they go through to open roads and dig out homes. Many roads were not yet open, like the one I will tell you about in another post!