Day 3 - More Yosemite (Waterfalls!)
Another North American Road Trip
Day 3:
Sunday, June 21st
We got up early as planned on this Papa’s Day and took a hike.
We weren’t sure how to make it through to the trailhead (that was right by our campground) without going through someone’s tent site, so we walked all the way out the campground, and around on the sidewalks. This added a little over a mile to our step count for the day, and meant we were on the trail by about 8AM.
The trail was the mist trail, and there were options for going to the bridge to look up at Vernal Falls, or continue on up to the top of Vernal Falls, or go even further to Nevada Falls. We were happy that it was cool when we started hiking, and that there weren’t a ton of people on the trail yet.
We were only a few minutes into the upward climb when I asked Bryan “What elevation are we at?” My breath was harder than it should be for this amount of exercise. Sure enough, we were way above where we live. Which is not hard to do, seeing as we live something like 200 feet above sea level. I watched my heart rate on my watch with interest, and we took breaks as needed.
I don’t seem to have any photos from the bridge, but here are some photos of the view as we were climbing many wet, misty stairs.
We made it to the top, and gratefully accepted someone’s assistance in taking a family photo or twelve.
We watched the water pour over the edge
And then sat down to consult the map and consider our options from there.
We decided not to go back down the wet, steep stairs, but rather to climb higher up and then go over to the trail on the other side and use a switchback trail to descend.
Behind us in this picture you can see Nevada Falls. We decided to view it from afar and not continue on to the top of it.
We saw some critters as we hiked along. One of the squirrels repeatedly “sounded the alarm” that we were passing by on the trail.
We also saw a lizard.
Then we got one of the best views of the waterfall we had had yet. We looked down on where we had stood next to the top of the Vernal Falls.
We made it back to our campsite after about 6.5 miles of walking and hiking combined. We rested there at camp and enjoyed some more slices of pizza. Yum!
Desmond did most of his Junior Ranger packet while laying in the hammock. I napped in the tent.
Then it was time to go do a ranger led activity to finish up Desmond’s Junior Ranger requirements. So we did the bear walk. We did not see any bears (that wasn’t the goal of the walk) but we did learn a lot about how people in the past basically trained the bears to come to people for food, and look for it in trash cans. I was surprised to see the photos of park rangers pouring food scraps out of trash cans for the bears in the past. I was pleased that the presentation was very sound from a behavioral perspective. They talked about how humans have changed bear behavior over time, and now how they are trying to modify human behavior to correct the mistakes we’ve made.
After Desmond was sworn in as a junior ranger (his second badge of this trip, and his forty-fourth overall, but who’s counting?) we went on a short walk to see another waterfall.
This time we went to see Yosemite Falls.
Desmond is in the blue near the bottom left-hand side of the photo above, scrambling on the rocks.
Here he comes!
We were hungry at this point, though it wasn’t 5PM yet. We stopped and got dinner at Curry Village.
We got ourselves some ice cream afterward, and then headed back to camp. Desmond listened to an audiobook for a while, and then (with a little encouragement) made a fire. He kept the fire going until it was time to head to bed.
Keep Traveling with the Schmidts on Day 4
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