Travel Tuesday: Yosemite

Thanks to a family wedding, Sean and I hopped on a plane earlier this month to visit a state I've long wished to: California. As I've never been, I insisted we make a vacation of it, and indeed we did!

Sean and I flew into Sacramento on a Thursday afternoon, picked up our rental car, and met up with the rest of our family at our Airbnb later that night. It was super affordable split 8 ways!

As the wedding wasn't until Saturday, we had Friday to ourselves. Sean and I made the two hour trek (oh, what a drive! Such windy roads I have never experienced on the east coast.) to Yosemite Valley where we met up with a friend of Sean's from college (long time readers may remember her from this post) who served as a private tour guide of sorts. This actually worked out perfectly because I injured my knee about two weeks before vacation and knew I shouldn't be hiking. Since she's more familiar with the park, she drove us around to all the major spots: Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, etc. where we hopped out to enjoy the view and snap some photos. 

My normal travel style is to wander and explore at my own pace, but this worked perfectly under the circumstances, and when we heard later that the rest of Sean's family only managed to see one or two areas of the valley on their own, we knew our day had definitely worked out for the best.

Have you been Yosemite Valley? Share your experience in the comments!