'A lotta rocks, y'all.'

The title of this piece comes from a dude who, upon first getting out of his car in the Yosemite Valley Lodge parking lot, looked around and then said to his family still sat in the vehicle: It's a lot of rocks, y'all. 

I will not say that seeing stubbed out cigarettes butts on the ground at a bus stop in Yosemite Valley would typify my experience visiting the national park, but it's not far off. There are hoards of visitors to the valley in the summer, and, arguably, not enough oversite of said guests. I spent a portion of my visit picking up litter, unfortunately. That said, I was glad to see the grandeur of the park after 44 years. I have hazy memories of our family trip to Yosemite--I think we camped--but even if I had remembered the 1980 stay, today's park experience would probably not be comparable as the number of visitors to the park have nearly doubled over the ensuing years. In 1980, there were approx. 2.4 million visitors to the park--which is still loads, to be honest. But compare that to pre-pandemic nos. hovering around 4 million annually. The last visitor tally taken was in 2021, I think, and the number of park guests that year was around 3 million.

My buddy, S., flew over last week from England and is making her way from California to Las Nevada via automobile. S. bunked with me here in SF the first part of her stay, then we both traveled to Yosemite together before parting ways yesterday. She traveled on to Sin City via Death Valley while I took public transport back home. (I wouldn't recommend it, to be honest, as I spent nearly ten hours on trains and busses before throwing in the towel and having my hubs pick me up from a bus stop about three miles from home.) I've major travel fatigue today, let me tell you.

S. was completely enamored of the flora and fauna in Yosemite. I would hazard to guess that her home turf of Newbury is vastly different. While we do have similar flora in my neck of the woods--redwood, oak, pine--the scale and magnitude of Yosemite makes visiting the trees feel that much more grand. 

Over the summer, I worked a retail job in a tourist area here in town called Pier 39. It's, as the name might imply, along the water and from the pier one has a stellar view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Marin Headlands when the skies are clear. Visitors from all over the world and the country visit Pier 39. I found that most days at work had me interacting with folk from German-speaking countries. The boss, interestingly, told me when I was hired and found out that I spoke German: We hardly get any German visitors. That told me that a) she doesn't know what German sounds like and b) she must not ever visit the Pier 39 shop. After a month on the job, I knew for sure that it was the latter and probably also the former. 

Anyway, back to Yosemite--German guide books must have a sort of prescribed route for visitors to California to take because the majority of those with whom I spoke had rented a vehicle and were traveling between SF and Los Angeles with stops in Yosemite, and in Las Vegas (this included seeing the Grand Canyon), and, time permitting, a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah as well in between.  It would seem that if the Germans are anything, they are nature lovers. 

I didn't take any litter pictures while in Yosemite because why bring any of us down, but I did take a snap that, for the most part, incapsulated my stay there. 

I'm still trying to figure out how these Germans got their VW camper vehicle over here from Hessen (I looked the plate up). Talk about dedication to the cause! 

I will leave you with a few more pictures of Yosemite--

El Capitan, there are five climbers on the rock face, if you can believe it!

Camp Curry, Half Dome in the background.

This big boy was eventually startled by some nitwits having a photo shoot/video shoot in the grass nearby.