Yosemite

Yosemite has been a trip Joe and I have wanted to plan for years. I went when I was still in high school for a family reunion, and thought it was the most amazing place I had ever seen. I remembered it like something out of Lord of the Rings. Nerdy, I know, but that was really the only way I could describe it to people.

We planned the trip for the 19th of May, and decided that we'd try to stay at the famous 'Camp 4' campground. If you aren't familiar with this place, look it up. According to Joe, it is "where rock climbing was pretty much born". Back in the day, people would camp there for months at a time, pretty much living there for as long as the weather was good enough to climb in. It was like a little community of dirt-bag rock climbers who drank, smoked, and climbed all day in the 60's and 70's. Nowadays, they limit camping to 7 days, with a limit of 30 days per year. The crowd is still the same though -- dirt-bag rock climbers (which Joe, of course, loved).

We invited some friends, Jason and Cindy, to come along with us, hoping they would be able to find a babysitter for their four boys. Luckily, her mom was up for the challenge and we were off to Yosemite for three whole days. On the agenda was climbing, hiking, and to see a bear (this was mostly only on Joe's agenda).

The first day we got there Joe and I weren't feeling well. We both had a cough and were both really congested. I also had a constant car-sick feeling that wouldn't go away. We took it easy, doing a couple easier hikes to Mirror Lake, and Bridalveil Falls. We also explored around Camp Curry and made a stop to the visitor's center and the Ansel Adams museum (my favorite part). All of us were pretty tired, and went to bed early that night.

Jason woke up around 5 am on the second day, and went walking around Camp 4. After hearing about his morning adventures, we all wished we had gotten up that early. He pet a deer, and also helped a ranger to scare a black bear out of the camp. He said that the bear had a collar around its neck that was used to shock the bear when it came into camp. The ranger would shock the bear and yell "get out of here bear!". After a couple shocks, and of course Jason's help by clapping at the bear, it wandered back out of the camp. The rest of us woke up at around 8. Joe and Jason went out climbing, and Cindy and I decided to hit up the showers. At around noon we all ended up back at camp, and decided to hike to the Yosemite Upper Falls. Talk about an a-mazing view. It is only a 3.5 mile hike, but you gain 2700 feet in elevation pretty quickly. The falls were incredible, to say the least. They say that May is the best time to go for the waterfalls, and they were right. And, to top it all off, the weather was perfect -- upper 60's to mid-70's all three days.

The last day there the boys and Cindy climbed most of the day, while I spent most of the afternoon in the tent. I was still really car sick, congested, had a horrible sore throat, and didn't want it to get worse. Joe found a bouldering buddy from Germany who was here for 8 weeks trying to climb El Cap before he had to go back home. His wife was also sick in a tent somewhere, so they were fast friends.

The trip was successful to say the least, and we already can't wait to go back again. Joe ended up getting to see his bear… we were driving on our way out and saw a bear and her two cubs. It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. I had always told Joe that it was too amazing there to even try to explain. After this trip, he agreed. There are no words for how amazing Yosemite really is.