Hike to Lower Yosemite Falls

It was about 4 p.m.

Kenneth and I were on the Yosemite Village Shuttle for one of the very last times before we had to make the long drive home to Southern California the next morning.

We planned out the entire week of our vacation, leaving Friday empty for spontaneous adventures in or around Oakdale, only to eventually come back to Yosemite. That was a far better decision anyway since Oakdale is made up of mainly farmland, a small suburb, a historic downtown area, and a few manufacturing plants (i.e., ConAgra Foods, Blue Diamond Growers).

It was a last minute decision to get off the shuttle at the Yosemite Falls stop. Many park visitors were going down the half-mile trail leading to Lower Yosemite Falls, so we followed suit.

The 15-minute walk was a little adventure of its own. We were surrounded by lush green trees and the (awesome) smell of fresh air, something we don’t experience often, or at all, where we come from.

We spotted a few squirrels and numerous birds along the way, which is always neat.

Whenever we look up Yosemite, we will always get countless image results of the park’s majestic mountains. But to be there in person to view them up-close? There’s nothing like it. The giant walls of granite made me feel smaller than I already am!

And then… we arrived. Despite the lack of water, as we went during a time of year when there’s not yet any snow, Lower Yosemite Falls was a magnificent sight.

I had never been so close to a waterfall (with or without the water), and I can only imagine it would have been a much crazier sight and experience if there had been a raging waterfall, which is more likely to be seen in the spring after the snow has melted.

We had several (or tons of) photos taken in front of Lower Yosemite Falls. And even though there was a caution sign warning visitors to not climb on the large rocks to avoid slipping and injuring themselves, many people did so anyway. Nobody fell (thank goodness), but Kenneth and I did not dare climb the boulders ourselves and enjoyed the geological phenomenon at a safe distance.

I didn’t want to leave this place. Not just Lower Yosemite Falls itself, but Yosemite as a whole. We knew it’ll probably be a long while until we return to the park again, so we tried to take in all that we could as we walked back to the shuttle stop.

We saw dried up creeks where water would otherwise be flowing, covered with twigs and tree branches that have fallen over time.

Many, many pine cones scattered the forest floor. I thought it was neat and adorable how someone lined up a few on a tree trunk on the ground.

I think we had been roaming around in this area for at least an hour before boarding the shuttle. While there were many other tourists around, it was such a quiet, peaceful time; the bright sun was gradually going down for the day, shining one last time through the trees before nighttime would take over.

Yosemite has such a special place in my heart. Out of the vacations we’ve taken, Kenneth has said his most favorite is when we went to Arizona to check out Grand Canyon. My most favorite so far has been Yosemite, Grand Canyon being a very, very close second.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, my parents used to get the Sunday newspaper and it’d include the Parade magazine. I remember one of the issues had a beautiful image of a forest and a flowing creek. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what the article was even about; after all, I was likely 11 years old then and I was more moved by the image than the words.

Either way, I remember thinking, “Wow, I hope to be at a place like this one day.” And here I was almost 15 years later… at a destination that very well reminded me of that photo in the weekly magazine.