Tuolumne Meadows is over an hours drive from the Yosemite Valley. We took the long drive in the morning, and stopped at Olmstead point to take pictures. Right at the edge of the main valley road was Bridal Veil Falls, a towering waterfall that really does look like a bridal veil.

Yosemite is set up to use a shuttle system so that there aren’t cars everywhere. The park is very crowded so this helps keep the roads a little cleaner. We parked at the day use are then took the shuttle the Vernal Falls trailhead.

The hike was split into two parts, one labeled moderate and the other strenuous. We set out not knowing if we would go all the way. We ended up taking it all the way to the top of the falls, and the last 30 minutes or so were all up steep (sometimes slippery) steps.

There were some great views of the rapids and falls. Since the falls flow harder during spring when the mountain snow melts, some parts of the falls were not flowing with water, but you could see where the water goes down.

At the very top was Emerald Lake, where we stopped to rest and watched people swim around even though the sign said “No Swimming. People have died here.” There were squirrels everywhere, and they kept trying to get us to give them our apples. The climb down was hard because of our rubbery legs, and there were even more people coming up now than before.

We took the shuttle back to the visitor’s center and saw the Yosemite Spirit movie, which won some awards for best documentary. I thought it sucked, but at least the theater was air conditioned.

We then took the shuttle to Lower Falls, and took a little trail there. Everywhere we went up to this point we kept seeing these blue birds, which we later found out to be Stellar Jays. It almost seemed like they were following us.

We took the long drive back to camp, where we had dinner and hung out more with our neighbors.