Yosemite

We had the unfortunate timing to be in Yosemite on Memorial Day Weekend, so it was busy. Busy. Thankfully the park is big enough that most of our time there was reasonable.
We did a great hike to see some big sequoias:

Nothing is better at making me feel petite than a giant tree.

We also saw some deer.

Can you find the camo deer? You have to look past my messy hair.

It was raining on and off that day, so there were lots of clouds that made for a sweet atmosphere. We had to laugh going past a particular look-out point because there were about a dozen cars that had stopped there, but the clouds were so think that you literally couldn't see a thing.

We then decided to visit Yosemite Village, where all the money-shot famous stuff is. Normally I would say that this was a mistake because it was a horrible, ridiculous 1.5 hours of gridlock to drive the maybe 2km of the village. However, it is so insanely beautiful that even that amount of sitting around in a car was nice given the views. It would have been even nicer if we had gotten out of the car, but at that point all we wanted was to get away from the crowds (I doubt we would have been able to park even if we had tried). 

We stopped at a little picnic table pull off just outside of the village for some lunch.

Lunch Time view

We met a very nice woman from Vancouver, who was vacationing in California with her husband and didn't realize it was the long weekend for Americans--they assumed they'd be able to find camping easily in the park. We got to talking and at one point her eyes grew as big as saucers and she pointed behind me and said 'Bear!' Here's the bear:

This bear was very obviously accustomed to people and their tasty picnic food. It had both an ear tag and a collar, so the park knew this bear and it had a pretty chilled out, calm personality. So much so that when we did the recommended 'make-yourself-look-big-and-talk-loudly-to-scare-it-off' it was having none of that. It just looked at us, picked up its paw and contemplated the best plan of action to get in on the picnic goodness. 

We were at a loss as to what to do until this rather large park worker waddled over with his garbage picking stick swinging and barked at it to 'get out of here' (who I've named The Bear Wrangler). The bear perked up and ran into the adjacent bushes to wait it out. At that very moment, a couple of tourists from Europe ran over asking 'Bear? Bear? I want to see the bear!' So the Bear Wrangler called them over and pointed to where it was waiting in the bush. This prompted other people to come over. Then a bus load of tourists pulled up right in front and those people all joined the group to stare at the bear. At this point Luke and I agreed that we didn't want to be around to see how the bear took being gawked at by a huge crowd people, so we hopped in the truck and took off.

I usually find the crowds at famous parks detract from my enjoyment enough that I don't feel the need to go back (like at Yellowstone), however I would definitely go back to Yosemite. Hopefully there's a less popular time that I can go in the future!