118/365: April 27th, Yosemite Day 2

We awake in paradise—the bliss of snuggling under a thin blanket, while a small fire burns steadily in the hearth, listening to the rumble of the river flowing swiftly over rocks and crashing onto immovable boulders through an open backdoor…

Matt and I headed out for an early morning hike. He really loves me—I know he’d rather catch a lil extra shut-eye on vacation, but he laces up his sneakers instead—he loves me, you see… :)

We wonder down the two-lane road, watching the river dance and tumble along in gentle descents... We talk, we laugh; we breathe in the fresh air and are thankful to be here in this beautiful place together.

Our first stop this morning = the base of lower Yosemite Falls.

We wander the easy loop trail without hurry, stopping to watch deer grazing nearby in the meadow…

Next up, the top of Vernal Falls… yes, to the very top, my friends…

Matt and I deemed this “Mist Trail” excursion a five star hike… yes, two thumbs up in our book.

Perhaps the boys did get us a little lost as we searched for the trail-head…

…but I quite enjoyed the extra stroll along the river.

From the get-go, this trail is steep—our initial ascent is a steep 1.5 mile climb to the wooden footbridge, where we get our first glimpse of the magnificent Vernal Waterfall.

Here, at this halfway point, we pull out the rain gear… they don’t call it the “Mist Trail” for no reason… and today, we came prepared :)

I didn’t take my camera along on our second ascent—a series of endless granite steps, many of them about a foot high, and almost all are completely covered in water spray from the falls… In fact, in hiking this trail, it appears as if the swirling beads of water are defying gravity—it seems like droplets of water are raining up at you…

But the payoff is well worth the effort… at the top we were rewarded with incredible panoramic views of Yosemite. We quite enjoyed our next half hour from the top of Vernal Falls… we ventured to creep to the edge of the waterfall to look straight down at the river below…we took a stretch out on the mammoth rocks, which had been wonderfully warmed by the sun… perhaps even nodded off for a good ten... ;)

Once back down the mountain, my energy is restored by the first bite of a yummy chicken pesto sandwich… and a blissful sit out on a sunny patio-deck…

Revitalized, our next stop was “Tunnel View,” the classic and, perhaps, most recognized vantage point of Yosemite. It did not disappoint. The lookout delivers an incomparable view of El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls rising from the Yosemite Valley, with Half Dome in the background and the forested Yosemite Valley beneath.

En route back to our hotel, we had this horrible notion to “head into the next town and get a good cup of coffee…” We thought we were in for a short trip down the road… no such luck… Then we thought it would be a ten minute jaunt to the next town… but no such town did ever appear… but after driving “just five more minutes” we turned the car around empty-handed :(

However, our unsuccessful coffee hunt did lead to belly-aching laughter on the drive home… I cannot accurately tell you why my screeching “just around the river bend” at the top of my lungs became so funny… nor can I recount “the slow part…” nor why Matt thinks John Smith gave Pocahontas smallpox…

But I do know that we laughed so hard we cried.