Everywhere you look you see granite! Whether huge cliffs and mountains or rocks lying about on the ground, the entire park is made of it. Yosemite is a large park and very popular. On the way to the busiest part, Yosemite Valley Village, you can see the famous granite formations El Capitan and Half Dome. We were lucky enough to go to Yosemite Village on a weekday in off-peak season, so we were (just barely) able to find a parking space. (We had to wait for a family to walk to their car, though.) But once there you realize why it’s called a village. Besides the visitor center and theater, there is a gift shop that also sells produce and provisions, a chapel, medical clinic, post office, grill, U.S. court, hotel and museum. These are all intended for use by park visitors, obviously, not the general public, but it was surprising to see so many amenities within the park. There is a fuel station elsewhere in the park as well as another hotel and history center and three more visitor centers. At the Yosemite Valley theater we watched the award-winning Ken Burns film on the park (23 min.). Jackson also completed his Yosemite Junior Ranger badge!

We visited Mariposa Grove, one of the three sites in the park where giant sequoia trees grow, on the weekend. Fewer visitors make the drive out here, so parking, though full, wasn’t an issue. A free shuttle takes you to the trailhead. The only place in the world where giant sequoias grow natively is the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. And here at Mariposa Grove they all seem to have names.