Thursday June 16th

Today we took a different way into Yosemite. Our goal was to go on all of the roads that were open, today we came in Highway 41 to the south entrance. We drove through the Sierra National Forest right before we entered the park.

Got into the park and drove to Wawona, parked and caught a shuttle to take us into Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia Trees! In the grove we saw about 20 living giant sequoias. All of the trees were between 2000 and 3000 years old, and were 200-300 feet tall. Words/pictures cannot describe the enormousity or grandness of these trees.







The "famous" sequoias we saw were:

The Bachelor and 3 Graces- This is a large giant sequoia with 3 nearby slightly smaller giant sequoias.





Grizzly Giant- This is the tree said to have inspired Hometree in the movie Avatar. One of its limbs is 7 feet in diameter, it has a circumference of 96 feet at its base. It is around 2000 years old and is the 25th largest giant sequoia living today.





California Tunnel Tree- We were able to walk through this tree holding hands. In the early 1900's they cut a hole big enough to take old cars through the middle as a tourist gimmick to have the Mariposa Grove become a part of Yosemite National Park.





Next we drove to Glacier Point. We had a 270 degree view of Yosemite National Park, we were able to see Yosemite Village, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, Half Dome, Nevada Falls, Vernal Falls and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We were told by many people that Glacier Point was a must see, and they were not kidding. It was breathtakingly beautiful and well worth the drive!

While we were up at Glacier Point we were able to throw some snowballs at each other, and have our 1st snowball "fight" as a married couple!








We finally made our way out of the park for good :( this time we left out of the only entrance/exit we had not seen yet; the Arch Rock Entrance. This was one of the first ways to get into the park and is exactly what it sounds like, a huge rock they used dynamite to blow a hole through to make the "arch."



The Merced River raging as we left the park, it was sad to see us go!


Later that evening we stopped in Mariposa, Ca and ate at the Pizza Factory. We had chicken wings and Hawaiian pizza, super yummy!

We did not check into our hotel until 12:15 that night but Matt was able to pull the honeymoon card and get us upgraded to a king bed with a fireplace in the room for our night!!