We've done it! Visited the holy grail of National Parks, Yosemite. It was a jaw-dropping experience. I thought it was gonna be a yeah-that's-cool type of experience, but even for a jaded old man, it was awesome and nearly unbelievable to come into the Yosemite Valley and see El Capitan, the shiny slick granite mountains, and the water falls.

The water falls were as spectacular as El Capitan and Half Dome.

We were able to take a short hike to the base of Bridalveil Falls to see, hear, and feel the falls.

Yosemite should be on everyone's list of places to experience. Although I must say it was the most congested park we have every visited. It was Saturday and there were extra happenings celebrating Earth Day; so, maybe that influenced the size of the crowd. But then maybe not. The park is a sight to behold, and it seemed that most of the population of CA was beholding it today.

We had also heard a rumor that the National Park Service this year had reduced their reliance on volunteers and hired more seasonal positions. The reasoning that we heard was that the NPS is celebrating its 150th year anniversary this year, and they wanted more uniform people visible to the public. Hence seasonals rather than volunteers. Hard to say whether or not the rumor is true, but we saw no, as in zero, volunteers today. We did see lots of uniform staff interacting with the public. We can only assume a lot of them are temporary, seasonal, and paid personnel. We have to keep our unbiased eyes open and see if the rumor tends to be true.

We are back on the road tomorrow heading north in CA. We haven't struck gold yet, but Yosemite was mighty close.