Laura, Z and I headed-up to The Valley late Sunday morning to escape the dreaded Tule Fog that had socked-in much of the Central Valley for over a week. Quite simply, we needed to see some sunshine. It turned out that the fog deck topped-out near Mariposa and within a matter of seconds the temperature jumped from 48 to 61 degrees! Ohhh did the solar radiation feel good to soak-up. Did I mention we saw TWO bobcats in Yosemite. We did.
1 Ahhh.. the sun. Note the fog deck to the left.
2 Yeah, so being burried in that crud for more than seven days without seeing the sun really sucks.
3 Laura and Z at the Mariposa History Museum's stamp mill.
4 The Stamp Mill still runs on special days. It was used to crush quartz and extract gold from the pulverized powder.
5 Bobcat! Seeing one is quite hard to do. I've only seen three in Yosemite in the 50+ trips I've made.
6 Bobcat
7 Bobcat
8 Cute bobcat.
9 Awwww...
10 Upper Yosemite Falls had enough water to put on a show.
11 Laura and Zephyr enjoy the pestering of dad.
12
13 Sitting and soaking-up the sun.
14 Hurry-up guys!
15 One of my new favorite shots of Zephyr. Little kid in a big world!
16 Yosemite Falls through the oaks.
17 Too cool for One Half Dome Towering Over Yosemite.
18 Oaks
19 Oaks zoomed-in.
20 Laura and Zephyr enjoyed the hike.
21 Shadows!
22 Jumping on Shadows!
23 Stepping on shadows!
24 Bike path along North Side Drive.
25 At this point I bent down to put Zephyr in my backpack and a sunning bobcat jumped out of his napping place 10 feet from the trail and suantered into the sun.
26 Close-up of bobcat #2
27 Another close-up of bobcat #2
28 Selfie in front of the lower falls.
29 Laura and Z with flash.
30 Laura and Z with no flash.
31 And to end the day, bobcat #2 had wandered across the meadow to stalk something. It was so cool to watch!
32
33 Hard to believe that Zephyr is still a month shy of two. Such a cool kid.