I’m in Yosemite again today. Despite the stupidity with the roads (see the previous post), I managed to get some good driving done.

First, in Yosemite Valley:

Upper Yosemite Falls:

El Capitan:

I then drove up to Glacier Point and hiked to the Point from the parking lot:

Half Dome and Falls:

The Ahwahnee:

This picture shows the hotel I’m staying at in Yosemite Valley. In the first one of yesterday’s 3 pictures from the hotel balcony you can see the view from the hotel looking up to this point.

Although the hotel and Glacier Point are only about a mile apart, the road snakes through the hills for 32 miles because of the elevation changes. Glacier Point is not the highest point on the road – that’s somewhere around Mono Meadow (I wonder if there’s a Stereo Meadow or a Surround Meadow). At the highest elevations there are still patches of snow in the shady areas along the side of the road.

Tomorrow I’m on to Sequoia / Kings Canyon which should be a lot less crowded.

I didn’t think it was possible for the park staff to top yesterday’s bountiful supply of stupidity, but they exceeded my expectations by a wide margin…

The park newspaper noted that there were 30- to 60-minute delays on Wawona Road (the road south through the park). I’ve dealt with national park road construction before, and it is generally performed in a reasonably intelligent manner. Apparently the Yosemite folks are learning (or not) as they go along.

The main thing that is going on seems to be the installation of 6″ curbs at the side of the road in some points, for some unknown reason. However, to accomplish this, they have actually removed parts of the road, ranging from 10 yards to about 500 yards, and replaced it with a rutted dirt road.

They have one lane closed in a number of places, with flaggers at both ends to control traffic flow. This works so poorly that the trucks that are delivering the concrete for the curbs have to stop, put out a tarp on the side of the road, and dump the whole load of concrete because it is hardening before they get to where they’re supposed to deliver it. So there are large piles of concrete in a lot of the pull-over spots.

Once I got past the intermittent construction, I came to a place where they had removed about 10 miles of the road (again, for no apparent reason) and replaced it with a dirt road. In many spots it appeared that they actually placed the dirt on top of the paved road.

Why they’re doing this work at the peak of the tourist season escapes me…

Someone really needs to start hitting everyone involved hard with a clue-by-four.