It’s Called Panoramic For a Reason

and retro Fresno weather

Hi. Nice to see you.

I finally got around to doing some challenging hiking this Summer, a first for me: the Panoramic Trail (just to Illilouette):

If you like changing views of Half Dome, this is your trail. At times it doesn’t seem real.

I went up early. I wanted to ‘beat the gate’ - from 6AM-2PM Yosemite charges $35 and requires a reservation during the Summer at any of the gates. But get there before and you waltz into the park.

I left my Tower District driveway at 4:37AM (meant to leave at 4:15), I knew it was going to be tight if I was going to beat 6AM.

I drove as fast as I could while being safe (even accidentally passing a Highway Patrol car at one point) and got through the gate no problem at all at 5:43 (the Park Rangers were starting to walk down to the gates as I went through). It was a fist pump moment.

Later in the day when I left around Noon, the line to get in the gate was an hour wait. So the advice of going to Yosemite early is sound.

The views along the Panoramic Trail are incredible, every 10 minutes of hiking you look up and Half Dome is a different inspiring entity.

Even if hiking isn’t your thing, Glacier Point is fully accessible to all and has the views - you can even look down upon Yosemite Valley if you are ok with heights.

Just get there early as the parking lot tends to fill up by late morning and you have to go into spot-hawk mode.

It’s Late June So It’s Hot

How are you doing with the heat? It’s early in our ‘Season of the Sun’ so I am ok. But it is draining, is it not? People get noticeably edgy too.

Speaking of weather, I discovered via Social Media Escape Club, that there is a site a guy, Matt, put together called WeatherSTAR 4000+, where you can look at your forecast in a retro Weather Channel way.

You can put in any city and it gives you realtime weather but it’s like you’re in the 90s.

This hits for me as a website & weather nerd. I want to have a dedicated screen setup for it.

Anyways, thank you for being here. Having this fresnerd community to send stuff out to has been very comforting for me these past few months as I have been going through an unwanted separation. So thank you for that and I plan on getting more stuff out here, on The Fresnan, Drinking & Thinking and more since I have more time and desire to do it now.

Talk to you later.

-Mikey The Fresnan