You Can Travel The World,

But Nothing Comes Close to the Golden Coast

On July 21st, Ron and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. We wanted to get away. Somewhat close. Definately cooler. This was mid-July - it was hot here and I wanted c.o.o.l. I had never been to Yosemite National Park, so we decided to take a little 2-day trip to drive over the border and go to Yosemite.



We stayed the first night in Bishop. It had this great little movie theater. I called the theater number from our hotel room and received a nice recording on the movie of the week, what time it would be playing, and the brief description of Invictus starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. I was kind of excited because I wanted to see that movie when it was in the theaters, but hadn't, so here we were in this little town, with the cute old fashion recording of the movies playing that week. We headed off to the theater. F.Y.I, 2 tickets, popcorn, drinks, all under $20. That doesn't happen in Vegas. I didn't notice the marquee as we walked in, but the previews started, and then it rolled right into Leonardo DeCaprio's latest movie, and it kept going, and kept going...and I kept thinking "man this is a long preview, it's almost like the start of the movie. Where is the rugby movie???"


We ended up watching Inception, not Invictus.


The next day we drove over to Yosemite and drove through the park. It did not disappoint


There was water, trees, babbling brooks, big rocks.
Really big rocks.

El Capitan.

Half Dome.

Cool and refreshing waterfalls. Because the west coast had a longer-than-usual spring, the snow melt-off was delayed. When we first considered going I checked out the internet descriptions and they all said peak waterfalls were in May, by end of July they would be dried up. So then we decided to wait until next spring to go - then CBS news did a story on how remarkable it was that the waterfalls were still going strong, so our trip was back on! The waterfalls did not disappoint.

This classic shot has all three landmarks in one view - El Capitan, Half Dome, and at the very right, Yosemite Falls.

This is how we look after 30 years together, standing in front of the landmarks.

I loved just riding through the park and looking at all the trees.

We had stopped at the grocery store in Bishop and bought some deli sandwiches and snacks for lunch. We ate lunch in the park and had a great day.

The really fun part was at about 3:30. We had finished seeing the things we wanted to, so Ron mentioned we had time if I wanted to keep heading west and go to San Simeon. this is the great part about the whole 'empty nester' situation (I don't hate many things, but that title I hate-- I just can't think of any other descriptive word for Yippee, the kids are grown, self sufficient, on their own, and we can do whatever we want.). There was no reason why we couldn't spend another day, find a hotel on the way, and go to Hearst Castle.