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| Time for the annual Yosemite Photorama! | |
 Upper Yosemite Falls on Saturday... or where it should be |  Upper Yosemite Trickle on Monday |
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As you might guess from the photos above, it rained a bit last weekend. It also snowed a little--just enough to dust the valley floor Sunday morning, though the rain melted most of it pretty quickly. Wayne and I went on a photo walk Sunday morning...we were miserably cold and damp, but learned and relearned a lot of photo tips. It was kind of funny...perhaps due to the weather...but the walk was more of a photography lecture (delivered to a small group of shivering photo buffs standing in a covered bus stop) than it was a chance to take photos. The best part of the walk, in a way, was when we returned to the Ansel Adams Gallery (I expect nobody is too surprised that they sponsor photo walks, eh?). Then the guide, who uses the same digital camera we do, showed us some tricks for getting good (or even better) photos out of it--things like underexposing images a half stop. He also brought a few of our photos up in Photoshop and showed us some ways to adjust them that I'd never used. I got to use some of that new photo knowledge that afternoon, when we took advantage in a near-break in the rain to hike up to Mirror Lake. On the way back, we got our best glimpse of Half Dome. There was a funny circling cloud tumbling right in front of the face of the dome, and while we waited for a shuttle bus we kept watching for the face to appear. The bus appeared instead. | |
 Somewhere near Mirror Lake |  Half Dome |
| Before we left on Monday, Wayne and I had lunch with a couple of our college friends at the Ahwahnee Hotel, one of those grand lodges built in the '20s and '30s at a number of National Parks. The Ahwahnee is massive and rugged, yet still manages to be elegant at the same time. It has fireplaces big enough to walk into without ducking your head (some even have seats built into the fireplace sides so you can get really toasty). Dinner at the Ahwahnee is quite upscale--jackets required, no jeans allowed, easy to forget you're in the middle of a beautiful national park unless it's light enough to see out the huge windows surrounding the dining room. Lunch is more casual, but still much tastier (and costlier) than the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria, where we ate the rest of the weekend. | |
 The Ahwahnee Hotel | |
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It's funny...you'd get the impression from these photos and my comments above that we spent most of our time there outdoors walking around. Because of the rain, we probably spent more time indoors playing with all the kids (of the seven families that came this year, only two are childless). And really, that was why we go--our college friends have scattered all over the country and this is the only time we get to see most of them. Rain or not, it was wonderful to laugh with them again. Just don't let any Hare Krishnas knock you up for $20 outside the visitor center. Right, Dave?* Cheryl * Dave's wife: "Isn't that really cheap? Um, honey, I think you mean, 'hit you up.'" Amazing how something like that will keep popping up over a weekend! | |
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