Final Day in the Valley
We considered returning to Tuolumne Meadows one more time, but we were both tired, and I didn't want to have drive the Tioga Pass Road at night and return to our room after 11:00. Instead, we slept in, worked on some of our images, started organizing to leave tomorrow, and generally relaxed.
We ventured out to the Basecamp Eatery for lunch. We'd checked out the menu and wait times earlier in the week, and decided it wasn't worth the wait. We've been eating A LOT of peanut butter and jelly this week. Today, we decided to give the eatery a chance. After trying cheeseburgers and French fries, we confirmed we made the right choice earlier in the week. The rooms in Yosemite Lodge are OK, and the location is very good. But the food is still a significant problem, even with the new concessionaire.
We drove around the Valley in mid-afternoon to re-shoot the reflections of El Capitan in the Merced River. Carol didn't have the correct lens when we shot here earlier in the week, so this was a priority for her. There is a pull-off for this location, but the only ones that really know about it are photographers. We often have this area to ourselves. When we started down the trail to reach the river, an older man immediately started talking to us. I couldn't really understand him at first, but then I saw his naked wife standing in the river. Evidently, they thought this would be a good location to skinny dip. We moved down the river a bit to shoot, and the couple resumed their skinny dipping. After a few minutes, the couple returned to shore and got dressed just before a tour leader and his group walked down to have lunch by the river. That could have been really awkward...
After we shot El Capitan from every conceivable angle, we continued down the Valley to Sentinel Bridge. We photographed a couple paddling down the river on paddleboards. I'd never seen paddleboarders on the river before. We also photographed Yosemite Falls across Cooks Meadow, which is usually a great shot across the lush meadow. In this heat, the meadow is drying out fast. We finished by trying to shoot Yosemite Falls reflections in the Merced River downstream from Sentinel Bridge, but the river level was too low and there was just enough breeze to prevent any reflections. We didn't get any significant images today, but we checked off the final images we take on every trip to the Valley. We can say we tried to make the best of some challenging conditions this week.
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