Once at the valley floor we took the first parking lot for Bridalveil Falls (620ft/189m falls). This was a nice, reasonably easy 1.2 mile round trip walk with fabulous views of the falls. We found out later that this waterfall is usually dry by this time of the year and has been dry through summer before the rains this week, so there is a plus side to all this rain we've seen in the last couple of days!
We were back down at the car by 9.30 and we drove further into the valley and parked at the visitor centre. It was fairly quiet, lots of spaces, possibly due to it being early still but also I expect the wet weather was keeping people away!
After a quick look around the village shop, and the purchase of a waterproof poncho for me as it was still raining, we set off on the 1.5 mile round trip to Lower Yosemite falls (320ft/98m). Funnily enough the rain had now eased! This was a flat easy walk but the weather was clearing up and it was very pleasant to be walking among the tall pine trees. If you walk this trail the right way there are spectacular views of the falls framed by trees. We didn't and had to keep stopping to turn round and take a look! 🤣
We walked back to the village and grabbed a coffee each at Degans Deli which we took back to the car to have while we ate the Danish pastries we'd brought with us. Yum!
Refreshed, we walked to the nearest bus stop and waited quite a while before one of the Yosemite shuttle buses turned up. We had about a 20 minute ride before we reached our stop. Vernal falls. Not sure we read the description of this walk properly. I was sure it said easy/moderate walk! It is a 2 miles round trip to to the viewing bridge, but also 300ft/90m uphill all the way. Although puffing we decided to walk on towards the top of Vernal falls. I managed another half mile or so, all up a steep hill, before I let Keith carry on. After a short rest I carried on and got to the bottom of the granite steps before I saw Keith coming back. He hadn't quite made it to the top of the falls, there are apparently 600 granite steps to get there and the total elevation gain from the start is 1000ft/300m! Keith waited for me while I continued up! I failed! Just too much! Little bit disappointed but I did get to see the top of the waterfall if not all of it. We set off back down, have to say it was just as hard going down such a steep slope and I couldn't quite believe how far up l had made it. The round trip probably took us about an hr and a quarter.
We happily sat on a bench, resting, and waited for the shuttle bus back to the village. We dropped our coats (poncho still in its packet unused!) and camera at the car and popped back to the shop so I could buy a t-shirt. Then we were headed back to the condo, with a couple more photo stops in the valley and another at tunnel view again. It started raining again as we left the valley but no problem as we have achieved all the sights we were hoping for today.
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