Yosemite National Park – Mariposa Grove Giant Sequoia Trees

For our third day of hiking, we took a quick 5 mile stroll around Mariposa Grove–home of Giant Sequioa Trees!

A sign to show the scale of and endurance of the Grizzly Giant.

Naturally occurring (or carefully prescribed) forest fires are good for the Sequioas.  The fires burn off weaker species, create rich soil, and cause pine cones to burst and release Sequoia seeds.

I was pretty tired of walking, so Ryan was tempting me along with cocoa-roasted almonds.  Shaking the container like I was an animal.  Oh and at this time we saw a coyote! so we started yelling and waving our arms so he would run away.

The view inside of “Telescope Tree.”  Very cool.

Ryan inside of Telescope Tree.

These mamma-jammas are BIG.

“Clothespin Tree.”

The tree on the left is called “Faithful Couple” where two separate trees have grown together at the base as one.  The tree on the right may be the next Faithful Couple in a few hundred years as their bases were beginning to grow together as well.

After logging our additional miles, we spent a few (very crowded) hours on the Valley Floors doing small hikes on easy trails.  We decided that we wanted some sunset photos, so we hung around to go to Glacier Point at sunset to see Half Dome.

While the sunset was lovely,  enjoyed photographing the other people and photographers who were there to witness the great event. Being that I am a wedding photographer, I think that this is a good thing.

So much of this going on…

This guy was my favorite.

Please note that the previous day, we hiked from this point (Glacier Point) to that waterfall way in the distance and all the way to the Valley Floor.

During our descent down the mountain, the sunset deep into the sky creating these beautiful colors (These photos SOOC = Straight out of the camera).