{ Yosemite }

Beautiful. All decked out in snow. What a setting!

The classic, Yosemite Falls, was flowing over ice and snow. The frazzle ice meandered down the stream not keeping up with the strong current of water.

Fall wasn't finished when the area was hit with this snow storm. So pretty to see the fall color leaves beside the snow.

Duck!

Large granite boulders are everywhere around here.

Building a snow man with dad was the highlight for the kids.

These three deer, a doe and two yearlings, were not about to leave the good grazing here, ten feet outside of the visitor center. Many people stopped to watch and take pictures.

Oops, you never know when a tree will give up lose its load of snow!

Is this El Capitan? I can't remember.

{ I LOVE Sequoia National Park when it snows }

We made it to Sequoia National Park yesterday despite the rain and snow. We stopped in at the south ranger station and learned that the north entrance to the park is closed. That meant going the long way to Yosemite the next day.

I love the fall colors topped with snow from an early snow fall. So beautiful, I just wanted to stay and look all day. But we had somewhere to be.

As we climbed higher and higher into the pine trees, the scenery began to take on a winter wonderland effect.

We stopped at the museum there and learned about the height of the giant sequoia trees relative to other things such as the Statue of Liberty. The trees can be taller.

The sun was out in the afternoon, so we headed to the Wolverton snow play area and did some sledding.

The clouds started to roll back in for the next round of snow that night.

We had a snowball fight before we left. It seemed like the right thing to do.

And then we were off to check into our room at the lodge. It was a full moon that night as we walked to the dining room for dinner.

The next day we loaded up the truck early, ready to get on the road to make it to Yosemite before dark.

The kids thought it was great fun to dig the truck out of the snow. Now I know why my husband wanted to bring along the broom! A marine biologist from Orange stopped to talk to us as we loaded up the truck. He told us the roads were closed. He didn't think the roads were passable at all and told us horror stories of people trying to get down the mountain. When we went into the lodge and asked there, they said that the roads had been reopened. We headed on out, hoping to make it down before the roads got bad. At one point, my husband had to help someone push his car up a slope, the guy was blocking the road and had no chains. Coming around a bend, we saw the marine biologist had slid off the road in his jeep.

The going was sketchy. The first ranger we came to, who was helping the poor marine biologist, said the roads were closed because the snow plow was broken. The next ranger said it was open again, the plow had been repaired. So, down the mountain we went. I really loved that snow plow!

But road conditions weren't good going down this windy twisty steep downhill road. Even though we had snow tires and 4-wheel drive, we were told to put chains on, too. The heavy construction vehicles were even slipping and sliding all over the place.

After a very long and slightly nerve-wracking drive, we made it to the bottom of that mountain. It was too bad we couldn't spend more of the morning exploring, but we were lucky to have gotten out of there at all today.