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As you know by now, we had been to the US last month. My first post was about the
Muir Redwood Park in California. We enjoyed the place, a lot. We had planned to visit Yosemite Park (I was told that this park was famous), Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. I didn't know much about Yosemite park but since this was a park, I expected to see animals, birds and many many trees! I hadn't heard of this famous monolith rock, El Capitan! I came to know about it just before getting down from the bus at the Park! Then the guide said that this place was famous for water bodies, water falls, rare species of plants etc. It is in the
wiki link also. But California is facing severe drought now. As a result water fall was not there. But the famous El Capitan rock compensated our interest to a small extent!
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| El Capitan, the Monolith granite rock at the Yosemite Park. |
'
El Capitan is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith extends about 3,000 feet (900 m) from base to summit along its tallest face, and is one of the world's favourite challenges for rock climbers and base jumpers.'
'El Capitan is composed almost entirely of El Capitan Granite, a pale, coarse-grained granite
emplaced approximately 100 million years ago. In addition to El Capitan, this granite forms most of the rock features of the western portions of Yosemite Valley.' It is composed of a most durable granite allowing it to withstand pressures of glaciers and erosion...another link says. More details can be read
here. John Muir, a naturalist, who developed Muir Wood park, was responsible for protecting and expanding this park too, stopping the land developers using the area. Details are in the
Wiki link.Pictures taken of the huge rock from different angles are here:
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| El Capitan! 'El Capitan, means, 'The Chief, according to the ancient natives who lived here, few centuries back. |
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| The rocks are covered by clouds! |
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| So much vegetation on the rocks and it had no rains for some years in this area. It was drizzling a bit, when we reached this place and then stopped! |
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| We noticed water only here. No water falls were there because of drought, the guide said. |
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| You can notice the dryness here and mosses on the tree trunks. |
After seeing these rocky areas, we had some coffee and sandwiches in the canteen here. As expected, very very expensive. I noticed that all the tourist places had very clean rest rooms and when the bust stopped for breakfast or lunch, even though 2-3 bus load of tourists were there, the rest rooms were clean. This is because the people are aware of cleanliness here, even our own people who come here, are different in nature! Hope one day our country also will have clean places like these!
Nothing else was shown here, by the guide. So, I told my husband that this was waste of time. But when I see these pictures at home, I changed my mind...even plain rocks look beautiful sometimes! And I noticed a few redwood trees here, which is my favourite tree now!
I forgot to add! We saw this cute squirrel near the canteen. This looks different than the ones we have here or the ones we saw at the Berkeley University campus. I didn't see any birds though! Drought and the setting in of winter might have been the reason. The guide said that this was the last trip of the season. Next trip to this place would be in March! Instead of Yosemite park, they would include Dead Sea in the 4 day tour.
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