relaxed We went to Yosemite again during the long Thanksgiving weekend…only this time it was with friends and during a different season. We stood in front of Best Buy for almost 7 hours, covered in layers of sweaters and jackets as it was extremely cold, for a laptop which we did not get but I kinda enjoyed the experience. After just 5 hours of sleep we left for Yosemite. We reached in the night. Extremely tired, we ate dinner, took a small walk and went to see the skating rink and sat in front of the fire for sometime, after which we went to the tent cabins to get a good nights sleep, only that we could not sleep. It was freezing cold and the tent cabins were not heated and to add to that the blankets were damp. We kept giggling and making fun of the state we were in but we had a tough time sleeping and I think I slept for a total of 2 hours. So the next day we decided to go and ask for an upgrade to a heated tent cabin and luckily there were two of them available. So after moving the luggage we set out to see Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass.
The drive and the views we got were breath taking. If tall trees swaying to the wind were what greeted us for some parts of the journey, then for some it was half frozen lakes and at others it was frozen streams or ice covered rocks. The constant change of scenery made me enjoy every bit of the drive. We stopped at turnouts to get some nice snaps. There were ice formations on the rocks. The greens of the trees and plants, the greys of the rocks and the whites of the ice formation were a beautiful combination. We walked to the meadows. It was winter and there was nothing there except for spring grass. In summers they are supposedly covered with flowers and in peak winters, snow. We just missed the snow by a month. We then drove to Tioga Pass and further down to a lake. The lake was frozen on top and so we walked on the slippery surface and goofed around for sometime and had fun throwing ice at each other. We then drove to the Sierra Nevada and got an awesome view of a canyon and the highest motorable road in California. A family had gotten their dog there and I made a new friend. For the first time I saw a husky and he was a really handsome guy.
We turned and drove back because it started getting dark. We had an early dinner of awesome home made pizzas and then got ourselves some souvenirs. That night the moon looked awesome. It was a full moon with a circle of white around it which looked like a halo. I haven’t quite seen anything like that in my life before and I loved it. That night all of us slept well because we had heated tent cabins and the exhaustion of two sleepless nights got the better of us.
After breakfast the next morning, we went to see the Ahawanee Hotel and were spellbound by the interiors of the place and its location. We then drove to Glacier Point where we got the most wonderful view of the whole valley below. We also got a nice view of Half Dome from there. After that came the Mariposa Grove. This place has about 500 Giant Sequoia Trees. On the way to the grove we just got a feel of what to expect. Huge trees easily spanning 30-40 floors of a building and I literally had to strain my neck to get a view of the whole tree. On reaching the place we had to walk for about a mile into the grove. The sad bit was that some of them were burned down and the others charred in what looks like a forest fire that took place recently but that did not affect the beauty of the huge trees and the peace and quiet of the place nor did it affect the fresh air. It was something quite different from other trees I have seen before and I loved every minute I spent there though I was reluctant to walk that one mile initially.
It was then time to drive back to Sunnyvale. We had loads of fun on the way back. Making fun of Bhasker’s singing, we reached home, tired, hungry and sleepy but content in a way that we saw some of the most beautiful places in the last 2 days!!!