July 4th weekend in Yosemite

For July 4th, we went to Yosemite for Marjorie and Dorian's lovely weekend-long wedding, based at the Wawona Hotel on the south side of the park. (Marge was a constant companion of mine in college, as we were geology majors and field partners.) The south side of Yosemite is the only (drive-able) area of the park we'd never been to, so we were excited to explore. On Friday we drove out to Glacier Point, which overlooks Yosemite Valley. We hiked to the top of Sentinel Dome to get better views. It was a bit hazy, probably from all those CA fires...


It was a short hike to the dome, so we continued on to Taft Point, which featured more views of the valley, crevasses and steep cliffs.

On Saturday we took a longer, more vertical hike to some falls, the name of which is hard to pronounce and therefore hard to remember. Scott calls them the "Chalupa Falls."

Aside from regular park pursuits, there were plenty of wedding festivities to keep us busy. On Friday, there was a campground "casual Mexican dinner" and then we had cocktails back at the Wawona Hotel. On Saturday night there was a "wedding eve" bbq and party with dancing. The wedding took place on Sunday morning, followed by a luncheon and lawn games. This is the second wedding we've been to where the bride hula-hooped! It was quite the weekend.