Losing Our Zen in Yosemite

This post is kind of difficult because Yosemite National Park is an amazingly beautiful place. Granted, we are a bit tired at this point of the trip and a little sick of the car. We also made the mistake of dawdling a bit in Lake Tahoe and ended up driving through the part of the park at night. Yikes, don't ever do that! The roads were super curvy and we saw a ton of deer on our way in the park at dusk. So we knew they were lurking around and ready to jump out. It definitely made the trip to our hotel harrowing. We were fine, but a bit stressed and on edge when we arrived. Not a great start to Yosemite.

As you can see from the pictures, Yosemite is as beautiful as everyone says. Pictures truly don't do it justice. Absolutely breathtaking.

Now here is where things go a bit wrong. First, we had to drive all of those twisty roads from the night before to get to Glacier Point. This is a viewing area looking out over the valley and a great spot to see Half Dome, as you can see:

However, this is the view we spent most of the day seeing. It's actually more crowded than it seems in the image. People squeezed in looking at the view, loud talking, phones ringing, kids crying, jostling to get good pictures. Even in the photos we took, there are people you don't see on either side or that had just run in front of us. It was really overwhelming.

We were able to get this shot, though there are people on either side just out of sight and we had to squeeze into a corner of the viewing deck. 

We felt like this during our entire stay at Yosemite. Loud people who didn't seem to be appreciating or caring much about what they were seeing. Rocky Mountain National Park had plenty of people visiting, but they spoke in lower tones and just seemed more respectful of the environment. We actually saw people stealing pine cones, sticks and rocks from the park. (For those that don't know, that is illegal in national parks.) It just made us sad and frustrated; we obviously love the national parks and there were so many people people spoiling Yosemite. 

However, I don't want to leave this post on the negative note, so here are a few photos when we went off the main walkway. We saw waterfalls!