My wife and I try to spend some time in Yosemit National Park each November. This year we arrived on the 13th and departed on the 15th. Eschewing our travel trailer, we stayed at Yosemite Lodge, in Yosemite Valley at an elevation of 1,212 meters, or 3,976 feet. The intertubes give its location as Latitude: 37-44'36'' N &
Longitude: 119-35'55'' W
Details are below the orange cloud.
Mammals
After checking into our room, we walked out behind it to get our bearings and saw the first of many deer, a doe:
They were plentiful, as were this year's offspring:
Naturally, there were also bucks, sometimes actually too close:
Mixed in with the larger fauna were myriads of ground squirrels, such as in the foreground at the shadow line here:
and in the lower left here:
Bugz!
Though I haven't been seeing many butterflies, and only cabbages and sulphurs at that, at home, at a bit over 4,000 feet I saw this guy and a few others of his ilk:
Right about here, on this trail, up above the valley floor, there were grasshoppers
Birds
Nearby was this robin
Down on the valley floor, this granary tree out behind the Ahwahnee Hotel
yielded Acorn Woodpeckers, the clowns of the forest
Ravens were in abundance
Waterfalls?
Thanks to recent rains the falls were flowing
But barely, as you can see from lower Yosemite falls, here
and the Merced River was lethargic
Weather & Fall Color
Cold but not freezing, dry, no snow, but hazy/foggy and cloudy much of the time
There was little fall color. A stand of deciduous trees we photograph every year were bare this year, having dropped all of their leaves already, yet, throughout the valley, many deciduous trees had barely started to turn, if at all.
Gratuitous Shot of Half Dome