viewpoints, yosemite national park

Our tree house in the morning light.

First stop of the day was the Tunnel View lookout. This is the perfect place to get *that* Yosemite shot.

We stopped at a river while on the Cook's Meadow Trail to get some photos and noticed some deer grazing in the grass.

We couldn't get over the views you could see from pretty much anywhere in the park. I've never seen mountain/cliff formations like this before, and they would tower around you wherever you were.

This is THE spot that Sam and I wanted to go to more than anything. Yosemite Valley is a gorgeous lookout from the bottom of a river and all the shots that made us want to come to Yosemite National Park were taken from here.

Needless to say, we stuck around for quite a while taking a million photos.

Onwards we went to Yosemite Lower Falls. I've included more information about the hike at the bottom of this blog post!

Reading about these falls online and visiting them in person was a completely different experience to what I was expecting. I loved them, but I didn't realise there wasn't a hike involved at all to get there, so naturally it was (in my opinion) what looked like the most popular place for everyone to hang out. There were lots of people trying to escape the summer heat by swimming in the water! If I ever go in non-peak time I would love to hike to Upper Yosemite Falls!

We had fun scaling the unsuspecting slippery rocks to get as close as we could to the waterfall. We didn't get too close but enough to feel the cool mist on our hot skin. It was bliss!

A very friendly squirrel who came up to Dan and sniffed his camera.

Extra information on some of the trails we did:

Lower Yosemite Fall Trail

hike length: 1 miles

hike time: 20 minutes

difficulty: easy, the entire hike is a paved footpath

Cook's Meadow Loop

hike length: 1 mile

hike time: 30 minutes - there are quite a few spots to stop and take photos along the way!

difficulty: easy

other posts about hikes: Mirror Lake // Bridal Veil Falls

Since we were only in Yosemite National Park for a short couple of days, we wanted to see as much as possible so we picked the easier trails that took less time. I can't wait to come back next time and be able to spend time hiking to Vernal & Nevada Falls, as well as the Half Dome one day! 

all photos edited with my lightroom preset Disposable Film  | black and white photos edited with my lightroom preset Ghosts