6.18.09

Sorry for the delay... we haven't had any wifi until now so I'll have more pictures up shortly! I'm dating the pictures to go with the blog so just scroll through the blog list and look for the ones with pictures.

And thanks for all the happy comments!

We finished up San Francisco by grabbing breakfast at Mel’s Drive In. I have to admit, San Francisco has the best food ever. Everywhere we went the food was amazing! After taking our time and enjoying our breakfast, we began our 5 hour drive over to Yosemite in attempt to make it there in enough time to hike out for our first night in the woods. We made it there in time, found ourselves a parking spot and headed off towards Mirror Lake. After about 3 miles into our hike, we came across a sign that read the trail was closed due to a recent rock slide. Thanks for the heads up when we checked in. Since we were on a time crunch to get to our first stop before dark, we took off our shoes and headed through a freezing cold creek about knee deep. It was so cold you could literally not feel your feet half way through the walk in the creek. We made it to the ‘Wilderness’ area of Yosemite and set up tent just in the nick of time. Tuesday morning we packed up and began Day 2 in the woods, heading up to the area of Tenaya Lake about 11 miles away. We crossed a few creeks but this time we had bridges and fallen trees. And we soon learned that mountains out here just go up; they don’t ever seem to go down or at least that’s what it felt like. After stopping for lunch, we began on our way but it was soon brought to a halt as Steveo spotted a bear just in front of us. I managed to sneak by a tree as Steveo tried to scare it off by hollering and banging sticks together. But I’m pretty sure if bears could laugh, it was probably doing so. It just looked at us like ‘ha’ and went about doing its thing. I guess my wish of seeing a bear came true but I had preferred doing so when there were actually people around. We survived and made it through night 2 of the hike. Wednesday, Day 3, was a long and strenuous hike. We ended up going about 14 miles, with an elevation gain from 7,000 ft to 10,000 and back down. We also had to trek through tons of snow and up melted creeks but it was all worth the while. After taking a little break we headed off towards Half Dome in attempt to climb the top to finish out the day. We made our way up the steep rocky climb before coming face to face with the cables that shoot almost straight up 400 ft. I don’t think we were expecting it to be that steep, so we just sat below and watched for quite awhile. After finally deciding to head up, an ever so nice lady next to us went on to tell us about how a guy died just a few days ago on the cables. Thanks for the reassurance. But with a sweet little Australian couple convincing us, we put on the gloves and began the ascend just behind another group. It was scary, super scary but I didn’t look down and kept my momentum. My forearms were on fire but I refused to stop as I thought I might get too scared to keep going. We finally made it to the top and it was breathless. We were shaky and Steveo was anxious for us to get back down but I had to snap a few pictures. Just when you start to relax, you realize half the battle isn’t even over yet as we have to climb back down. It was scary but we made it and we are still here! It was beautiful and I’m so glad for myself that I did it. Being a not so adventurous kind of person, it was definitely an accomplishment for me; something I can mark off my bucket list. Anyways, we made it back to the valley after 4 days in the woods. We were dirty, smelly and hungry; so we were excited to be back to civilization. First things first, we had cheeseburgers and French fries, took showers (that cost $5) and managed to do some laundry. What a nice way to end a trip in the woods!