Weekend getaway: Mariposa - Yosemite

My goal for 2017 is to visit as many national park as possible. To kick off the year, I picked Yosemite as my first national park to visit because not only it is the closest to where I live, I heard Yosemite looks pretty good in the Winter. Here are some highlights from the trip, if you'd like to see..

From my past trip to Yosemite, Yosemite Falls has always seemed underwhelming because of the amount of water it got, but in the winter, the falls was magnificent. I get the hype now :) 

It felt like Yosemite was frozen in time during winter. We had a lot of fun throwing stones onto the frozen lakes :)

Giant redwoods covered in snow was as gorgeous as it sounds.

The highlight of the trip was seeing the sunset being reflected on both Half Dome and El Capitan. It's always a humbling experience to be able to witness such magnificent thing.

Because it's a weekend trip and none of us knew how to chain up our cars, we decided to stay in this little town outside of Yosemite called Mariposa in this charming Airbnb and rode the YARTS up to the valley for a day trip. Glad that we did that because we got to experience the charm of Mariposa even for a short two-nights :)

On the last day we drove south to Bass Lake and was greeted by at least 10 stray cats. We quickly went to the nearest general store and treat them to a nice lunch before we drove back home.

Here's a quick 3-days weekend itinerary to Mariposa and Yosemite

Friday
• Drive to Mariposa after work
• Have dinner delivered from 1850
• Stay at Airbnb - The Loft 

Saturday
• Have breakfast at 1850
• Drive to Mariposa Park & Ride - take YARTS to Yosemite Valley Lodge
• Walk around the Valley
• Go to Chapel / Sentinel Cook’s Meadow
• Take YARTS back to Mariposa and have dinner
• Stay at Airbnb - The Loft 

Sunday
• Drive to Bass Lake and have lunch
• Drive back home