On the 22nd day of April in the year of the Lunar New Year, I visited Yosemite National Park with my family.
The park is located on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at an altitude of 1,800 meters above sea level and with an area of 1,168681 square miles. Facing the humid air flow of the Pacific Ocean with abundant rain and snow, many rivers cut into deep canyons. The peaks are continuous and covered with dense forests.
It's more than 400 kilometers by car from San Jose. The park is accessible in all directions and has no gates. To enter the park, there are three wooden kiosks on the road, which cost $35 per car, and give us tickets, a guide map of the park, a 12-page newspaper for the "Everything You Need to Know" Yosemite Guide, and an introduction to the Yosemite Sequoia Inn. Tickets are valid for seven days, but visiting the park takes several days.
The homestay in the park booked online is operated by Sequoia Hotel. Arriving at 8 p.m., the front desk where the accommodation was arranged was closed, and the staff had already left work. Leave a letter in the porch mailbox with accommodation information** and the key to the property. Feeling left out, the hotel staff worked and rested on time, and it was hard to say anything.
Looking around, the wooden houses of the B&B are scattered in the forest, scattered. There are one, two, three;The larger ones are like villas, and the smallest ones are like hunter's huts. There is no navigation signal in the deep mountains, open the mobile phone map, drive around the forest roads, and look for the predetermined B&B house number. Fortunately, it was still bright, and if you arrived after dark, I really didn't know how to find a place to stay.
A few giant sequoia trees in front of the porch steps were on the road, so I had to park in the distance. Inside, the old-fashioned British home décor, furniture and facilities are all available. There was a pit heater in the living room and there was also wood for the fireplace. In the alcove is a small frame of the owner**, a slightly chubby white elderly gentleman, smiling kindly at the guests. Next to it, hang a photo of the owner and his wife standing on the porch when they were young, the man is wearing suspenders, and the woman is wearing a long flower skirt, handsome and chic. I don't know where they are now.
Walked up to the balcony outside the back door and was stunned. The balcony is on the edge of the cliff, the Merced River rushes through the gorge, the sunset hangs in the treetops, and the birds are thrown into the forest, and an imaginary picture of paradise is truly unfolded in front of you.
At night, the B&B is deep in the dense forest and quiet, and one or two faint lights of the B&B in the distance strive to light up the dark mountains and forests. Except for the sound of gurgling water in our ears, we were far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It was raining heavily during the night, and the raindrops crashing on the roof woke me up. I thought: There are many famous mountain monks in the world, and such famous mountains, in East Asia, I really don't know how many temples there are.
The sky is bright and clear, but the river is fuller, and the white waves are surging. It is close to the summer solstice, and there is still snow on many peaks, adding clothes to keep out the cold. Wake up early for a walk, and six or seven deer graze on the roadside slopes. They are Xi to strange tourists, meet unexpectedly, and never get tired of seeing each other. When I came back, I lay on the balcony lounger, watched the clouds roll up, listened to the gurgling waves, inhaled the fresh air of the mountain stream, and integrated my body and mind into the mountains, the forest, nature, and Yosemite.
Can't wait to head to the heart of the park, the Yosemite Valley, where you'll hear its name for a long time. The drive lasts nearly an hour, first spiraling up to a few peaks and then spiraling down to the bottom of a deep valley. The car is in the clouds, the cliff path, there is no guardrail, and it is frequent, thrilling. Why not build a guardrail?It is said that the law does not allow protected areas.
The valley in front of you "everything flows, animals and so-called inanimate rocks and water".
A huge granite cliff sandwiches a deep and narrow valley, with thousands of walls on both sides, like knives and axes. The Half Dome and the Chieftain Rock are especially magnificent. I've seen Yosemite's films before, and I'm not as immersive as I am, and I really face the shock of the peaks. People are under the cliff, if Mount Tai is overwhelming. Nature is wonderful, allowing tourists to look up at the cliff and sigh at the sky. The cliff provokes human curiosity and confusion about how it came to be
There is an old legend among the Indians that a woman and her husband were arguing and fighting. Disgruntled souls turned them into stone, the Half Dome and the North Dome, forever facing each other across the valley.
For more than 100 years, geologists have been challenged by how the cliffs were formed. They believe that the granite of the Yosemite Cliff solidified five miles underground, and that the Nevada orogeny from the end of the Jurassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous period uplifted the granite fault mountain, which stretched over eastern California.
Glaciers then pull out, scrape, polish and carve the landscape through the canyon. Dynamic forces shape Lembert, Sheep Stone. The knob-like top of the Cathedral Peak, named Nun Arak, stands above the glacier and escapes from it. As the climate warms, glaciers melt, leaving huge unstable rocks stranded and precariously inhabited and hanging in suspense.
The mountain is constantly weathered and peeling off stones, and the big ones are like houses, scattered and rolling down the valley;The small ones are like gravel, piled up at the foot of the mountain. Rockfall weighing up to 100 tons ** transforms the valley.
The 1868 Guide to Yosemite declared that "a half-domed mountain range will never be trampled by men's feet." Faced with the challenge, George Anderson reached the summit in 1875, and countless others followed, venturing to the pristine granite cliffs of Yosemite, forever changing the sport of climbing. The challenger of the cliffs attracts climbers from all over the world. I am dying, like my generation, I can only stand timidly at the foot of the cliff, worship the nobility of the cliff, and envy the courage of the climber.
Among the national parks, Yellowstone is famous for its fountains, and Yosemite Park is known for its waterfalls. In Yosemite in spring, the cliffs are full of waterfalls, such as thousands of silk. Take "Yosemite Waterfall", commonly known as "Horsetail Waterfall" as the most, "the bead curtain hook does not roll, fly and hang the remote peak", the waterfall drop is 400 meters, three stacks, and the water potential is huge. The foot of the waterfall crashed into the mountain, and the rolling waves roared from under a wooden bridge towards the Merced River, and the roar could be heard for miles. Tourists have poured on the bridge deck to shoot, shoot, all drenched in soup. Nian Nian didn't want to leave, and had to flee quickly. The scenic spot sells plastic raincoats, which are specially used by tourists to watch the waterfall. The waterfall is scattered under the waterfall to wash the boulders that have been eroded and fallen by the mountain, and those who have not bought raincoats have either gone into the boulders to hide under the waterfall, or left quickly. Let my daughter take a picture of me in front of the waterfall** to prove that "I visited here". We didn't buy raincoats, our hair was messy from the waterfalls, our clothes were wet, and we were embarrassed, but we were happy with the other photographers like children.
For most of the year, the Merced River flows calmly through the Yosemite Valley. Shrubs and deciduous trees enrich the banks with green ribbons of life. The moist meadows gave way to black oak, which provided nourishment for deer and woodpeckers, like the early Indians. However, during the flood season from late April to early July, Merced seemed to be crying out for "change", and the flood water rearranged boulders, roads, and campsites throughout the valley, reconfiguring natural and human masterpieces. Park Reminder: Swimming, rafting and boating are not safe during flood seasons, and picnic areas may be closed.
The subtle daily changes in the flow of rivers and waterfalls, the drastic changes in floods and nature create an amazing appearance of the "unparalleled valley". Day after day, year after year, the water washes and cuts through the valleys, so that people change with the floods, with the valleys, with the rhythm of nature. Today, narrow roads are built along the foothills and curving banks of the river on both sides, forming a winding circular one-way driveway, with 19 attractions to explore along the way.
Yosemiteme is in the wilderness, its sights, sounds, smells, and emotions are wild, showing the power of nature and the untouched.
Congress has designated more than 3 million acres of Sierra Nevada for protection in the National Wilderness Conservation System, including 95 percent of Yosemite National Park. The guide map says, "Please respect the park's 9,000 years of human history. It is illegal to damage, defile, or remove any cultural or historical artifact from federal lands, and metal detection is not permitted. "Tourists are deeply aware of this and consciously participate in the protection.
During the drive, I saw a large area of redwood forests in the Sierra Nevada Mountains burning, and the trunks of trees were scorched all over the mountains. After the scorched skin peels off, a silvery-white core is exposed. The mountain is too steep to be transported, and it is a pity that the dead wood is too steep to be transported, and the dead wood is lying on its pillow and left to rot. I thought it was difficult to extinguish the fire and could not put it out, so I had no choice but to give up, but I later learned that it was spontaneous combustion.
Lincoln ** signed an act in 1864 to set aside the Mariposa Grove and the Yosemite Valley. But in the next few years, a fire broke out in the woods, and people began to extinguish the fire and protect the forest for a hundred years. Good intentions, but fueling Sequoia's losses. Studies and experiments have found that fires remove competing fir and cedar trees, exposing bare mineral soils and allowing tiny sequoia trees to take root and promote redwood reproduction. On the roadside at the bottom of the valley, the park's method of dealing with fallen trees in the fire is to select the timber for use, intercept the timber for the section, and gather the rest to burn on the spot, burning the smoke.
Giant sequoias dwarf the largest pines and firs. Sequoia is a descendant of an ancient tree line, more than 2,000 years old, nearly 100 meters high, and can reach more than 20 meters in circumference, as a symbol of longevity and strength, known as the "tree of trees".
Deep in the dense forests of the peaks, with hundreds of miles of trails tucked away, hikers venture out on foot, experience the sheer nature of the land, explore solitary treacherous places that are invisible to non-explorers, and enjoy pristine entertainment. The cowardly do not dare to go deeper.
There is only one small hotel in the valley, and the rest is camping. At the bottom of the valley river, tourists set up various camping tents according to local conditions. The park is lined with camping tents for visitors to rent. Yosemite at night, the stars are shining, the peaks are vultures, the forests are forested, and the river is bubbling, which makes people return to ancient times. Looking at the camping tent closely, I feel that living in a tent may be more wild and down-to-earth than living in a homestay cabin.
The climate in the mountains changes rapidly, and lingering in front of Yosemite Falls is suddenly met with torrential rain, lightning and thunder. Afraid of thunder and lightning from the towering redwood trees, he hurriedly ran back to the car to take shelter from the rain. Seeing that many tourists have nowhere to shelter from the rain while hiking, they move forward calmly and let the rain pour in, and I feel deeply relieved.
Fascinated by the cliffs, waterfalls, wildlife and beauty in front of them, and the inexplicable excitement of the young grandchildren, people have a sense of beauty regardless of age.
The management of the park is simple, with only two female mounted police officers who sell tickets and meet in the parking lot. The mounted police have nothing to do and look like a patrol show;They are working, but it is like riding a horse to see the scenery.
When we left Yosemite, we cleaned the room, took the garbage to the designated place, left the keys in the living room, left the door unlocked, and went back. From the time I booked the B&B to the time I left, I didn't see the owner or the Sequoia Inn staff.
John Muir, an early leader of the environmental movement, lamented"This is the grandest of all the special natural temples I've been allowed to enter so far. ”
About the Author
Shao Kongfa, a native of Quanjiao, Anhui. Graduated from Anhui Normal University, teacher and journal editor. Anhui People's Publishing House published "Xiangshui Anthology", "Traces of the Ancient Garden" and "Langya Qingying".