Frozen Yosemite Valley

Travelling too well known destinations can sometimes be overwhelming, from all of the planning ahead of time, to the time spent driving, flying, walking, Ubering, or bussing. This trip was no different. Normally, our company travells by bus on Sunday nights, after a day of shows, but this week I was staying behind an extra day to join my long time friend, Stephan Alvin, up to Yosemite, hoping to see the valley draped in snow. I was lucky to be able to stay at Stephans house that night, and we decided to leave around 8:00am, hoping for the road to have been mostly cleared of snow for our drive, rather than leaving at 4:00am to make it for sunrise, but dealing with very snowy roads.

After about an hour of driving, we came across a chain up area and put our chains on, getting ready for the conditions to get snowy, but as we were doing this, heard on the radio that all roads into the valley had been closed! To our dismay, we turned around, took the chains off the tires, and began brainstorming where to go now.

There were a few locations and hikes that Stephan had thought of, but none of them sounded nearly as exciting as what we had originally planned, so we kept thinking. Bivby creek Bridge came up, and we both looked on Google maps to see how long it would takeus to get there and we realized we could make it with 2 hours to spare before sunset, so we headed West! After about 3 hours on the road, we came to Carmel-by-the-Sea State Park, paid our $10 entry fee and walked around the beautiful rocky cliffs for around an hour while the sun was on its way down.

We left plenty of time to get to Bixby Creek Bridge so that we could find the best spot and watch as the sun dipped below the horizon.

The clouds had broken up just perfectly as we grabbed our cameras and tripods out of the trunk and walked the 20 feet to the edge of the cliff overlooking this magnificent panoramic vista.

We stayed for almost an hour after the sun went down, watching the sky turn a deep shade of blue, and the traffic zoom up the hill as they headed South along the coast.

So our day did not contain snowy rivers and iconic views in the Yosemite Valley, but we did make the most out of the situation at hand and ended up on a fun road trip together and captured a couple of iconic images from a beautiful location!

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