A Different Side of Yosemite

Day 57: 01/16/2022

Yesterday’s restful day was well needed. We got a later start today, but still made the drive to a different part of Yosemite. We took a really fun road through Stanislaus National Forest to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Here we had views of the dam and large reservoir and the Hetch Hetchy Valley below the dam. After a quick picnic, we hit the trails for a couple hours. A neat part to the start of the Hetch Hetchy trails is a long cave tunnel through a mountain! We walked the trail for about a mile along the reservoir towards Wapama Falls before stopping on a large area of open rock and just admired the beauty of Hetch Hetchy.

It was quite easy to decide that we would be coming back to Hetch Hetchy tomorrow. We hustled back to the truck since the gate at the entrance closes at 5 PM. We flew through the roller-coaster of a road back through the national forest and stopped at a lookout for the sunset. We went to bed excited for the adventure that awaits us tomorrow.