I’m on tour!
My aunt and uncle have been so kind as to let me jump on
their tour bus and enjoy some of their vacation after they visited me last
week. We did the usual Yellowstone stops and had great days in the park. We saw
a moose with her calf, a grizzly bear, buffalo and buffalo calves, and the
usual antelope, elk, and deer.
The Teton’s were as beautiful as ever.
After spending a day in Salt Lake City, we headed to
Yosemite National Park, which is a place I have never been to before. It has
been high on my bucket list for awhile, and since I’m headed to grad school, I
was not sure when this opportunity might present itself again for me to get to
Yosemite. I am so thankful that my aunt and uncle let me come with them for
this bit of their trip.
"I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night-
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous - how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!
I can't even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, you are still with me!"
Psalm 139: 7-18
I
have never felt so small in this world.
Yosemite National Park has a grandeur in its beauty that
words cannot describe other than to say that one feels unimportant in its
majesty. Yet we do matter. We have been fearfully and wonderfully made. How
amazing that the sights I have seen were created just for me to look at. All I
can say is that God must love us a whole awful lot to create such beauty for us
to admire and see his handiwork in. Praise the Lord!
I could go on and on about all the things I saw, but that
would take forever and you’d probably just skip ahead to the pictures anyway,
so here they are. J
Yosemite Falls (upper and lower)
lower falls
lower falls (with part of the family at the very bottom!)
Tenaya Creek
Half Dome
El Capitan
the first clouds I saw in 2 days...I was amazed at how clear the weather was!
*Now might be a good time to see a map of the park.*
We spent the night at a campground in the valley, and
went on a stargazing hike at nightfall. Pretty incredible! We did a couple of
small hikes and just enjoyed being in the park and around such fantastic views.
Our drive into the park was a little hairy in our big bus on a teeny tiny road at
10,000 ft in elevation, and our driver decided we should leave the park a
different way, so we got to see the giant sequoia trees in the park.
In the Mariposa Grove, we saw trees that were just
enormous. I’ve never seen anything like it. Once again, I felt small, unimportant, and like a blip in the history of the world. Sequoia
trees are a part of the redwood tree family that are fire resistant, insect
resistant, and can live well over 2,000 years. They don’t really die
either…they have a shallow root system in terms of their size, and fall over
when they get too top-heavy. Even when they fall down, they don’t rot because
they are impervious to rot as well as fire and insects! We saw a huge sequoia
that fell over several HUNDRED years ago. We actually don’t know when it fell
down….
the Fallen Monarch
the Bachelor and Three Graces
the California Tunnel Tree
Grizzly Giant
There really is no way to describe their size without you
experiencing it for yourself. That is such a common theme from this trip. I
just can’t describe the beauty and enormity of what I have seen this week and pictures can hardly do it justice. You just need to get there to see it
for yourselves. Feel how special you are that all of this wonder was created just so you could look at it. What a blessing.
reflection of North Dome (left) and Half Dome (right) into Mirror Lake
El Capitan, Half Dome, Glacier Point, and Cathedral Spires (l to r)
"And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Genesis 1:31
No comments:
Post a Comment