When I was 10 years old, my parents took me and my siblings on a tour of the United States. It was really the first time we’ve been out of the country. It was life-changing because for the first time, things and places you only saw on the television were actually both real and fake. We got to see the fake stuff done in Hollywood of-course. It was the typical US tour.
But what stuck with me was this place…Yosemite. There was something pure and real about it.
Now, 30 years later…I visited my son Febuary of 2011 for his birthday. There was a long weekend so we took a trip to the mountains with some old friends of mine from Bacolod.
When we entered the mountains, we stopped by the view deck, we took some photos then went down Yosemite park. I took a shot of El Capitan with the warm sun lighting half of the wall. Then we set out to camp, found a nice spot, pitched our tents and started to build a fire. It was a perfect camp site. Ethan had such a great time with his tito Richard, tita Jana and tito Monette, the real campers.
By 9pm, I went inside the tent, it was getting too cold for me. Ethan loved the cold and so did the rest so they stayed by the fire and continued their barbecue and storytelling.
I woke up around 4am because I was hearing rain outside but it sounded different. When I went out, we were all covered in snow. Apparently, it snowed the whole night when we were asleep. Ethan got up around 5am and started playing in the snow as the sun was creeping in.
By 9am, the rangers were closing down the mounting and asking everyone to put on snow chains on their tires. Two vehicles skided off of the cliff because of the ice.
The day before, Yosemite was this lush green summer mountain with snow caps only on the mountain top. In one night of snow, it was a totally different place, a totally different look. Amazing.
I took these photos off of my Lumix LX3 as we left Yosemite.
