SILVER ANNIVERSARY TRIP: A WHIRLWIND TRIP THROUGH YOSEMITE

Today's leg of our 25th anniversary trip took us away from Lake Tahoe (after a week) and through a place my wife has not been since she was a little girl: Yosemite National Park. It is indeed an awe inspiring place, with plenty of sights and a variety of topography: from thick, lush forests to bare towering rock formations.

Unfortunately, the pay station on the east end of the park (where we entered) was closed. Sooooo..we had no map to guide us to the more spectacular sights. We could have stopped at more trail heads and rest stops to explore, but we really needed the map.

We did manage to see some neat things, including a couple of things we thought we had missed. But because of some awkwardness with my camera and the difficulty of parking at the more spectator friendly sights, I didn't get all the pics I had hoped for.

Disappointed? A little. But as I have explained many times before, it's the journey and the one I get to spend it with that's fun. As my wife and I had dinner tonight after checking in at our new "digs" for the night, I commented that it has been so much fun not having to be somewhere, not having to set something up, not having to be concerned about who's ready for what, etc. Reality will set in soon, but for now...we're seeing silver!

Before arriving at Yosemite, we stopped to overlook the Mono Lake Basin. Park of Mono Lake was used in the early 60's as a weapons testing ground.Ellery Lake, elevation over 9500, one of many lakes in Yosemite Most of it is still frozen from

the winter weather.Another lake. Notice the picnic tables in the water. We passed a visitor who joked with us and said, "Why didn't you have your picnic out there?" I replied that my Boss knew how to walk on water, but I never learned how (the visitor didn't reply...he just walked away).The lines in the rocks are called glaciel erratics. Lines and freestanding boulders sit on a gently sloped rock table, the end result of fairly recent glaciation. And in the middle of the pic, the tiny point is "half dome", a rock formation popular with hikers and climbers.

Earlier I mentioned how much fuller our trip would have been with an accurate map. It got me thinking about this other journey all of us are on and our efforts to make sense of life. A lot of us stumble through life without a map. Oh we may hit upon a "truth" now and again, but nothing really lasts us. What we need is the instructions in God's Word to guide us and direct us.

And the journey continues....