Hi friends, welcome back to the last post of the honeymoon series (*insert my sad face*)! I hope you’ve enjoyed the series as much as I have! It’s crazy that our honeymoon was over two months ago, it feels like yesterday and forever ago at the same time. Anyways, after Jon and I finished our hike to see Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls, we headed over to see the iconic El Capitan up close.
I’d HIGHLY recommend watching Free Solo before you go to Yosemite so you can get a teaser for the park and realize what a monster El Cap truly is! Have you seen anything more majestic than this?
I was surprised we had to hike a short way through dense vegetation and on extremely unclear paths to get to the base of El Cap. I genuinely thought you could just park and walk right up to it, but that definitely wasn’t the case! We struggled to find the route to El Cap while we were already exhausted from our hike, but hey, at least we didn’t have to carry climbing gear.
Jon and I persevered and eventually made our way made to the base of El Cap. A rope dangled down near us and we thought it belonged to the group of climbers, but after an extremely thorough investigation it didn’t, so we attempted to climb. Sadly, the rope had so much stretch that we weren’t able to climb, but that didn’t stop us from pretending 🙂
Across the street from El Cap, people closely watched a group of three climbers about two thirds of the way up the mountain. We overheard where the guys were located and I could just barely spot them with my zoom lens. They had bright gear bags for their three-day climb, so that helped me find them easier. The guys looked like ants up there! Fun fact, the dad of the kids I used to nanny climbed El Cap back in the day, pretty neat!
After spending time with El Capitan, Jon and I stopped at one more beautiful spot to take some closer pictures of Bridalveil Falls. The entrance has been closed for construction since 2019, but should open in the fall of this year. The waterfall spans 620 feet, so it would’ve been challenging to take a full picture up close anyways.
Jon and I headed back to our Airbnb for the night, made burgers, and crashed hard from all the fresh air and hiking! My watch said we walked 24,500 steps, 9.87 miles, and climbed 174 flights. Wow!
We stayed at an Airbnb in Yosemite West, and I’d recommend this location. From here, the drive took about thirty minutes to Yosemite Valley and twenty five minutes to Glacier Point. The space was a bit outdated and lacked a/c, but it had a fully stocked kitchen, grill, two bathrooms, cable, wifi, and provided a comfortable stay inside the park. Also by booking this, we received automatic entrance into the park without needing an overnight permit.
On our last morning in Yosemite, Jon and I stopped at Tunnel View one last time to soak in the beautiful views and say goodbye. We made one final loop through the valley, checked in on the climbers on El Cap, and then headed back to San Francisco. I definitely felt sad leaving Yosemite, but I felt good knowing we saw everything we wanted to see. We stayed in the park for three nights, 4 days, and I felt like that was the perfect amount of time. If we had more time, I would’ve spent a day exploring Tuolumne Meadows on the eastern side of the park. We did see glimpses of Tuolumne Meadows on our drive in from Lake Tahoe and it was absolutely gorgeous!
The drive to our hotel at the San Francisco airport took us about four and a half hours. We quickly dropped off our bags and then headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. This was my first trip to California and I just couldn’t leave San Francisco without visiting the famous bridge I grew up seeing on Full House!
We were so used to the beautiful weather in Lake Tahoe and Yosemite that I forgot all about the chilly, foggy Bay Area weather.
I also couldn’t leave California without trying In-N-Out, so this is what we had for dinner to end the honeymoon ha! I let Jon do the ordering and we got two burgers, fries, and a vanilla milkshake. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I thought it tasted good, but not life changing.
Jon and I returned the rental car and hung out at the hotel the rest of the night. We had a 6am flight the next morning and I’d highly recommend staying at The Grand Hyatt at SFO. The rooms were recently renovated, extremely clean, comfy, and connected to the free airport tram that took us right to our terminal. We were both happily exhausted from the last two and a half weeks at this point.
The wedding and honeymoon was such a wonderful whirl wind and we felt so lucky to be able to safely have our wedding and go on a honeymoon. Thank you all for following along and I hope you enjoyed reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing and reliving our honeymoon. Now that this series is ending, I better start planning a new trip 😉
