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The three of us posed for this picture near the base of Bridalveil Falls.  You can see the creek to our right.  This is Saturday, June 1^st, our first day in Yosemite.  We've already set up camp at the Wawona Campground and planned on touring Lower Yosemite Falls and Mirror Lake before heading back to camp.

We were losing good light and it was heavily overcast when we reached Lower Yosemite Falls.  In fact, it rained a little on us while we were there.  Despite the low light conditions, I really like something about this photo.

Here we are at Mirror Lake, or as I call it, "Mirror Sand Bar."  The lake has really filled in over the years.  On the walk over here it continued to rain and hail on us, but we were undeterred.  

Mirror Lake was once a spectacular place to visit with ample photographic opportunities, but now it really isn't much to look at.  My dad has some amazing pictures of it decades ago.  On a calm day, you used to be able to take a picture of the lake and see a near perfect mirror image of the surrounding scenery.  With some of the old photos you could hand someone the picture upside-down and they'd likely not notice.   The lake was so beautiful, that early Yosemite enthusiasts filled in the river down below in an attempt to make the lake larger and preserve the lake from shrinking further.  Little did they know that this slowing of the flow of water only accelerated the accumulation of sediment.  Early settlers also harvested ice from the lake in early spring.  Eventually dredging began and the valuable sand and rock were used elsewhere, but in the seventies Park management decided to allow nature to take its course and discontinued the dredging.  The lake has been slowly filling in ever since.

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