reflections

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Wrapping up a Yosemite hiking weekend with June lake loop

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The previous post in this series is here..

After seeing the Tufa tower sunset at Mono lake, we came back to the lodge and decided to change our Mammoth lake plan. June lakes it turns out was closer and as beautiful. There were four lakes in the loop each with its own view. The entire loop was 16 miles and we could go back through the national park, have lunch at one of the benches in Yosemite and be on our way home.

None of us had visited June lake and our 9th member had suggested it. We were all happy with the change of plan. Finished our morning chai and breakfast, checked out and started driving.

We went away from the park for 20 more minutes (Mammoth would have been 45 minutes!) and drove through the June lake loop. The lakes in sequence are June lake, Gull lake, Silver lake and Grant lake.

We spent 30-45 minutes in each lake, took pictures, walked a small trail and drove from lake to lake. Finally we said bye to our friend at Grant lake and the other 8 made it to Yosemite park entrance. Just before the entrance we stopped by the first bridge that was built to cross over and saw the commemoration plate. We also watched the waterfall at the entrance.

Tried to find parking inside Yosemite to eat lunch. No luck after three tries. Finally parked by the side of the road, sat on a tree and ate the lunch that was already prepared. The ladies had it all microwaved in the morning before we even left. The food tased delicious, again. Then we made a dash for home.. with a few stops for breaks. We were back by dinner time!

It was a weekend well spent. Knew this was a risk but was glad to be able to relax in nature on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Also I did not drive. Just sat in the backseat and enjoyed the view. The entire group made it special for me. San made me feel “normal” again.

Here are the photos..

A video highlights reel. June lake loop area is called the Switzerland of California! Did not know that!

Think there will be a long break before I hike again! Enjoyed editing photos, reliving memories and writing about this trip. Hopefully once the knee is better, will get back to hiking again, but it will be very slow and steady progress!

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Herb Garden with views of Mt. Fuji

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The previous post in this series is here..

After eating Fuji apples we drove to the last stop before lunch. A herb garden. Our driver told us he already had told the restaurant that we will be coming before Noon.

There was a short drive to the Herb garden as it is almost towards exiting the Mt. Fuji area. It was beautiful. There was an observation deck above the garden with a little hike. The garden was free and the deck was not. Given the time constraint, the group just decided to hang out in the garden while I paid and ran up to the deck. Did not do justice to the money paid for the deck. There were lot of activities there including a swing .. you could take pictures of swinging towards Mt. Fuji.. it was all setup for photographers.. clicked what I could and ran back in time to join the group. The photos from Herb Garden visit

A video highlight reel..

After we finished, there was a short drive to the restaurant. There was no one there and the menu was 90% non veg, this after telling our driver that we were vegetarians. The restaurant folks were his friends. Also this wasn’t the restaurant we had checked out and put in the email earlier. Told him to drive us to the Taj restaurant. He reluctantly did and went back to eat with his friends. The Taj restaurant had a fantastic meal for us. We had a great lunch. Then we called our driver and he picked us up to take us back towards Tokyo.

He gave us the option to be dropped anywhere else if we wanted to sightsee before going back to hotel. We were going to see the old tower. He suggested we go to the new one. He dropped us off and we wished him well.

The tower experience in the next post..

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The cherry blossoms - reason for the whole trip

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Previous post in this series is here..

It was 3PM when we came out of the Shinkansen to Osaka station. We were seeing on social media that we were already a week late and the Cherry Blossoms were already on their way to falling off. By the time we reached Kyoto and Tokyo, there would be no blossoms. So if we wanted to see them in Osaka, there was one place on the hill to go see them. The Katsuoji temple!

It was an hour by car and they closed on the dot. We decided to grab two taxis again and just made a dash to the temple. An hour later we were dropped off outside the temple. There was a line for tickets. Yet again, Jr. came to the rescue by buying the tickets from her phone as we were going to the place. We went straight in with the “web tickets”. The temple is just beautiful. The cherry blossoms were still there. The whole place was surreal and immaculate. There were cute mini versions of the shinto gods everywhere.. placed on rocks, trees, in the water..

There were six locations which had stamps in different colors. You got a card at the entrance. If you put all stamps on them, you got a nice composite picture with the stamps. We made it to all the spots in the map, got the stamps and were literally the last visitors to be kicked out of the temple complex. We were all tired but happy. It was nice and cool in the hill. There were still a few taxis waiting. So we were lucky to get two taxis to go to our next destination.

Way too many photos post edit. Have created two galleries..

Portrait gallery

The final image after we stamped the card in all six locations.. The best one is mine as I used multiple alignment marks like a real integration engineer would!

Here is a short video of Katsuoji temple visit..

We were all happy at the end of the entire trip that we decided to go up to this temple even after an all day Hiroshima visit. We never saw Cherry blossoms like this after that day in Kyoto or Tokyo.

Our day was not over. The temple closes at 5:15 sharp. We got out at 5:14 PM. There was an hour plus drive back towards busy streets. Will pick it up in the next post..

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.