The car veered off the highway, falling into the shoulder! It hit a tree, turned sideways, and raised up onto only two wheels exposing its underneath before coming down with CRASH! Rubble, metal, fire, smoke, and wood shattered everywhere.
This was not my car.
It was two cars ahead of me, and I watched it all happen as we were racing down Tioga Pass to drive to the Cloud's Rest trailhead. I slammed on my brakes. Put my car into park. Slammed the door, and raced out to make sure people were ok. The driver and passengers were fine, but the engine was smoking. We grabbed water and doused the engine to prevent a car fire... This is how my day started at Yosemite National Park.
While many credit President Woodrow Wilson with creating the National Park system in 1916, President Roosevelt with expanding the National Parks in 1906 before that, or President Grant with signing Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872 before even that....many people don't realize that it all really began here at Yosemite with President Lincoln. In 1864, Lincoln gave Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Tree Grove to the state of California, thus launching a campaign by Frederick Olmsted to make it an official national park. This set into motion a chain of events which led to the founding of NPS, something that most people fail to realize. However, let's not fail to realize the brutality to local Native people and naming of several sites at Yosemite. Daniel Duane had an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times on naming of hotels in Yosemite.
Yosemite has a special place in my heart. It was the first national park that my school's outdoor program took us to. It was also where I competed in the Yosemite Half Marathon earlier this year and placed 17th in the nation. But more than that...it is just a really beautiful place. I had done the Mist trail about a year ago, but this time my eyes were set on hiking up the legendary Cloud's Rest trail (14 mile roundtrip).
I realized that my pace for most of my trails has been 2.5 miles per hour. I stuck this pretty well on my way up. At 1 p.m. I started on the trail from Tenaya Lake, and by 4 p.m. I was at the peak. From Cloud's Rest you can see everything that Yosemite has to offer. Chipmunks harass visitors looking for a break, ravens caw and perch looking down upon prey, and the forest expanse stretches over miles of granite, while white clouds lay at stark contrast to the blue sky above.
After I had made my descent around 7p.m. I was able to catch the fleeting rays of light, as the sun set behind the Stanislaus mountain range. I quickly turned to Olmsted Point that looks over half of Yosemite Valley, and the burning red sunset had lit up Half Dome unlike anything I had ever seen before. I was speechless.
“There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”