Yosemite Part I

Well, I had put off putting pictures up of my backpacking trip because I had planned on doing the blog so that I could print it and use it as my scrapbook.  But I just can’t seem to get to actually doing that so you all get it in a rougher format.  It was a great trip though so I wanted to write about while things are still a little fresh in my mind.  (Although I wonder these days if anything is fresh in my mind.)

 

We left Reno at about 3 am to arrive in Yosemite by 7:00 am to wait in the line for a wilderness permit.  It was not the most exciting part of the trip since there was quite a drastic weather change once we got into the park and it was a bit chilly.  At first, we were a little worried that we wouldn’t get the permit we wanted but we got lucky and were the first ones to request permits for the Sunrise Trail.  Erin is the girl beside me – the one who planned and got us through the  trip.  Everyone thought we were sisters and even I can see a striking resemblance!

After getting our permit, we had to use the backpackers’ campground right there in the  park because our permit wasn’t good until the next day.  So we set up camp there, ate some lunch, and got back into the car to go rock climbing.  Although I loved the hiking and camping, I think I actually enjoyed the rock climbing most of all.  The first go at it was a little rough and Erin had to help me a bit with the  rope at one point.  But after the first try, Nancy and I got better at finding the niches for our hands and feet.      

 

 Climbing Pothole Dome

Believe it or not, I was more scared to come down than I was to go up on the first try.  I think I had white knuckles after coming down.

 

More rock climbing pictures!  The only problem with rock climbing pictures is that you get a lot of back side shots (phrasing for the benefit of Cindy Edwards in case she ever reads this blog). 

We had company for the first 2 days of the trip.  Soon after we got into the backpackers camp, a guy set up in the camp next to us.  He was meeting up with an uncle in 2 days but was by himself until then.  For the most part, he was a nice guy.  But at times, he was really needy.  The first night, we pretty much went to bed and left him sitting at the table in our campsite because he wouldn’t listen to us say that we were really tired.  He came rock climbing with us but he didn’t have shoes.  Still, he was insistent that he wanted to try so he attempted with his tennis shoes, just socks, and with bare feet.  He was unsuccessful so he finally put the end of his mens size 13 foot into Nancy’s womens size 7 shoe and tied it around the back of his heel and attempted again.  It was sort of amusing.  He ended up making it but the shoes were just dangling before he reached halfway.  The rest was sheer willpower.

 

     

The really nice part about having him along was the hike he took us on the first evening before we left for the wilderness.  He showed us the most beautiful watering holes and a couple of other spots.  It was one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been.  And if we hadn’t all been starving after hiking for a couple of hours, it would have been very difficult to leave.  Even thoug the pictures don’t entirely capture the magnificence and all the brilliant colors, I’ll let the pictures do the talking for a bit.

 

We even got to see a brown bear our first night.  As we were finishing up dinner, we were sitting and talking and Erin looked suddenly stopped and looked and said very calmly,  “bear”.  He was probably 200 ft from walking into our camp.  Unfortunately, when we all turned to look, we made a loud enough noise that he left pretty quickly.  I wanted to at least get a picture of him but he wasn’t up for photo opps apparently.

By the end of the first day, we were pretty pooped out since we had gone to bed very late the night before and left at 3 am that morning.  So we slept in the next day and took our time heading out to the wilderness since we only had 5 miles to hike to get to where we were going to camp near a water source. 

That’s all for now folks.  I’ll finish the novel later.  I'm a first timer at this blogging thing so let me know if I haven’t done something right.