We left San Francisco around noon. The drive east is basically heat, wind farms, and a surprising amount of cattle on the highway. There were three of us, completely different music taste, fighting over the aux the entire way. Nobody was happy with what was playing — which honestly made it kind of fun. We got to the Airbnb around 4:30 and immediately agreed to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the evening. That was the right call. Day two was what we actually came for.
The valley kind of sneaks up on you. One minute you're on a totally normal road, and then suddenly there are granite walls on both sides and waterfalls dropping off them. I'd heard plenty about it and it still caught me off guard. There's a reason John Muir spent years trying to put it into words — and even he admitted the place defeated language. Standing there, you feel it. The light hits the granite in a way that seems almost deliberate, the waterfalls catch it mid-air, and the whole thing has this stillness underneath all the scale that you really don't expect. Ansel Adams spent decades photographing this valley, returning over and over, and looking around you understand why — not because a photograph could ever capture it, but because nothing ever quite does. Every shot falls short of the depth, the air, the way the walls make you feel genuinely small. You keep thinking the next angle will be the one. It never is. You just have to be there.
We had a big brunch first, then I hit the trail up to Yosemite Falls around 1pm. My sister and brother-in-law had done it before, so they let me go at my own pace. I went fast. Passed a few people on the way up who were thinking about turning back — told them to keep going.
Made it to the top of the falls around 5pm. There was a sign pointing to North Dome, another 45 minutes further up. So I kept going. That section is noticeably steeper than everything before it. Got there at 5:30 and just stood there for a while. The whole valley spread out below, Half Dome off to one side, walls dropping straight down. You really do get why people kept coming back to photograph this place — and why, every single time, they'd have to come back again.
Then I checked my phone. No signal the whole way up, so everything landed at once. My sister had texted at 5 saying they were heading back. I started running. The trail was getting dark and harder to follow. I got properly lost for about 15 minutes. Made it to the bottom at 8pm — my brother-in-law was waiting there, completely baffled, until he worked out I'd gone well past the normal turnaround point. I drank a lot of water and ate a lot of food.
Day three we drove to a nearby lake and I swam for an hour. Exactly what was needed.
On the way back we stopped at Muir Woods. Named after the man himself, who fought for decades to protect places exactly like this — and standing under those redwoods, you feel the weight of that. First time seeing them. Nothing really prepares you for how tall they actually are. You just end up standing there, looking up.
