National Park Stop #6: Yosemite NP Day 3

We're baaaaaaack!!!! When we were planning for our trip a few months back, we purposely decided to plan the first half of the trip and make our reservations, but then we'd leave the second half of the trip open and decide later where we'd go. This was fairly difficult for me, as I am a planner and like to know that we have a confirmed place to sleep every night. However, I liked the idea of experiencing each park and then deciding which one we needed more time to explore.

So, that's how we ended up back at Yosemite NP today! As much as we loved Zion, we felt like there was so much more to explore in Yosemite. We also figured Zion is closer to Texas, so the next time we're out roaming around, we'd be more likely to stop by Utah than California. 

We made reservations for two more nights and started planning what else we needed to see in this beautiful park. 

Spoiler alert: We saw a bear today!!!! Read on...

This was the best I could clean up this morning after camping for 9 days! 

We turned off the highway to head to McDonald's on the left, but when we saw tacos on the right, we both started singing, Tacostacostacostacos!!!! We love tacos all the time, but breakfast tacos hold a special place in our hearts. 

While waiting for our tacos. 

We made it to downtown Mariposa, CA around 10:30 this morning to check back into the KOA campsite. We had some time to kill before we could check in so we stopped by some of the shops. 

Bry can make friends everywhere. 

When the candy store doesn't open for another hour. 

One of the shops had the cutest little camper signs!!! 

Such a cute downtown area. After walking around for a while, we decided to go check in and make some lunch, then we'd head to the park. 

I wish we could bottle up the smell of these trees. 

I'm fascinated back the different textures and patterns of bark on each tree. 

Souvenir shopping! 

Yosemite Post Office. 

Driving up the mountain on Tioga Pass. Although it's only a few miles, it takes an hour and 15 minutes to get from our campsite into Yosemite Valley, and then it takes another 90-120 minutes to get to the top of the mountain. 

We'll never forget this trip. 

There's still snow at the top of the mountain! 

And...a pay phone? 

And a lake? It's crazy to think this lake is over 8,000 feet in the air! 

We haven't mentioned this yet, but ironically, this summer is the National Park's centennial celebration. The parks were officially founded in 1916. However, Yosemite was protected as a state park in the 1860s, and other parks were protected around that time as well. 

His karate kid pose! 

After driving around Tenaya Lake, we started making the two hour drive back to the city. On our way down, we noticed people were congregating near the woods. This could only mean one thing: Brian was finally about to see a black bear! 

There's no way you'd be able to see the bear, so please enjoy this picture of people taking a picture of a bear. 

It's very hard to see, but this (brown) black bear is the little dot between the two trees making a triangle in the photo. 

Not only were we excited to have seen a bear, something even more amazing happened next. We drove very slowly around the bend to see if we could get a better view of this little guy in the middle of the meadow. As we pulled off the road again and just barely creeped forward, we noticed two female park rangers were about to shoot blanks at the bear to scare it off. We had front row seats! Bry got the whole thing on the GoPro. The bear is totally fine, the blanks in the shotgun are only meant to scare him off so the bears learn to stay away from the road and away from people. 

Ready to take on the bear if needed. 

We had dinner around 9:00 at a super cute restaurant called 1850 after driving around the mountain all day. They had fun decor and the food was amazing! 

We're trying to soak up every minute here and not take any of it for granted.