Yosemite

[Joe Republic]

Heading there tomorrow until Thursday evening.  Have any of you been, and do you have any tips?

[Joe Republic]

Thanks for all the advice, guys!  Except Ernest of course; I've experienced long-time family pets being put to sleep that were more amusing than your jokes.

We came into the park from the east on Tuesday afternoon via Tioga Pass, stopping at the Tuolomne Meadows visitor center not long before they closed.  Knowing that finding a vacant campground with no reservation on an evening in July was going to be a sh[Inks]show, but luckily we found a spot at Yosemite Creek.  The drive to that campground was about 30 minutes off-roading (in a Chevy Cobalt), which was such a bitch that we knew there was no way in hell we were going to take that road again until we left the next day, so we spent Tuesday evening just camping.

Wednesday we packed up, drove the sonofabitch road back out and straight up to White Wolf campground, found a spot, pitched tent and then got moving straight down to Yosemite Valley, which was still an hour's drive away.  We rented bikes at Curry Village and rode them over to Mirror Lake and Happy Isles, then back to Curry to drop them off again.  I took the option to test out my new GoPro by strapping it my head for the bike ride - I still haven't even watched that back yet.  Overall this bike ride was probably my highlight of the trip.  AAA***** would recommend

After that we drove up to the Tunnel View for the obligatory Photo In Front Of Yosemite Valley, and then further up all the way to Glacier Point just in time for an epic sunset.  From there we also kind of cheated and got to see Vernal and Nevada Falls up close, by way of one of those public binocular stands.  Saved a hike, at least?  After sundown we drove back to White Wolf for the night.

This morning we drove back to the Valley to check out Bridalveil, which unfortunately is kind of a bust because I'm told that this time of year the fall is mostly dried up to barely a trickle.  No mind, we drove over to check out the main visitor's center and store and stuff, and then I took a quick dip in the river just under El Capitan.  Then home to Vegas.

All in all a pretty awesome trip.  Oh and out of the approximately twenty thousand other tourists we saw there was only about four black people.

[Joe Republic]

Yeah, black people are not into outdoorsy stuff. They much prefer city nightlife/hotels/restaurants/dressing up and going out/etc. Europeans, on the other hand were everywhere at Yosemite when I visited. Impressive when you think about how far the trip is for them.

That's pretty much what I figured.  It was just really interesting to witness; it was probably about 75% white people (of which about half were European), 15% Asian, 10% Hispanic, and basically zero blacks.

[Joe Republic]

No, I don't think I saw a single one, in fact.  Plenty of individual tourists, but no busloads of them.

[Joe Republic]

Thanks for all the advice, guys!  Except Ernest of course; I've experienced long-time family pets being put to sleep that were more amusing than your jokes.

Isn't deriving amusement from the death of animals one of the warning signs that you might be a redneck?

Just stop.  You're trolling.

[Joe Republic]

It turns out my observation wasn't completely off: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/30/local/la-me-yosemite-diversity-20111030

Less than 1% of all tourists.