Happy Birthday, Brian! We hope you're having a great birthday.
We decided to sleep in this morning to recover from our 5-mile hike yesterday and our 1:30 a.m. bedtime.
We had a leisurely breakfast and lunch in camp before driving down to Yosemite Valley. A gray squirrel in camp provided
the morning's entertainment. He methodically checked every pine cone below our campsite for seeds before returning
to his home along the stream.
On our way to Yosemite Valley, we photographed Cascade Creek
as it plunges over 1200 feet down the mountainside
in a series of cascades. Cascade Creek crosses under the road before it resumes its dive another 1000 feet to the Merced River.
After Cascade Creek, we returned to our favorite photo spots along the Southside Drive. We photographed El Capitan
across the Merced River and El Capitan Meadow. We also photographed the Three Brothers from the south side
of the Merced. This is one of our favorite winter shots in the snow. The winter viewpoint was under water, so we had to settle for shooting
from a sandbar downstream. We wanted the exact same image in winter and spring, but the river had other ideas.
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| Three Brothers | El Capitan | Half Dome |
As we drove along Cooks Meadow, we saw two deer out in the meadow. We have lots of images of deer, but we were hoping to photograph these two deer in the context of the meadow and the towering granite spires in the background. We tried lots of angles and approaches, but the results were always the same: the deer look very small against the 2,000 foot tall granite cliffs.
We returned to camp just before dark, which was far better than last night.
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