Don’t miss the link to our video farther down!

Our goals were two-fold: get a little exercise and fresh air, and check out how much water was pouring down from the snow pack. But, as it always is with our National Parks, we got so much more. We got stopped 3 times on the drive in for road repair crews, and this cut into the hiking time so we decided to concentrate our energies on just 2 treks. The first was a short but steep walk up to Vernal Falls. We weren’t thinking too much about the fact that we had gained a bit of altitude just being in Yosemite until we got about half way up the 1000 foot rise. Wow, what a climb! Luckily it’s a wide, paved trail with easy access, and you get some excellent natural air conditioning when you hit the bridge/view area.

That stream behind Wendy is usually a quiet little creek

 We also spotted Illilouette Fall from the Vernal Falls Trail. It’s usually hidden with a small flow, but it peaks in May, especially with the winter snow pack, and was running like a water cannon!

Illilouette Falls coming out of her shell for the spring

 Although we saw a ton of road repair, and it seemed like there were trees cut down virtually everywhere, for the first time ever we saw some trail repair going on. With all of the heavy run off, there was lots of trail erosion, so crews of forest service folks were busy cracking granite into chunks and hammering them into place.

These guys break rocks with their bare hands (sort of!)

And what trip to Yosemite would be complete without a beautiful panoramic photo of YosemiteFalls?

Yosemite Falls looks really dramatic in the spring