Yosemite, Jour Deux

I was on meal duty again for breakfast, day 2.  We made what my dad affectionately calls, "Mountain Man Hash."  It consists of half-cooking a package of bacon in a dutch oven, pulling the grease out with paper towels and throwing in hash browns with butter, and finishing it off with a dozen eggs.  My dad and I cooked it to perfection, evidenced by the hungry mob that emerged from the tents to devour our offering.  Having eaten our fill and cleaned up, we were all ready for our first full day in the park.

 

Basically, Matt and Ashley had to sleep the first night in a separate campsite.  In the morning, we needed to move them.  This, of course, was the obvious solution.  The blowup mattress is still inside.

There was a river that ran right by our campsite that was so beautiful and clear that I had to go try the water.  Despite all logical reason and a few laws of thermodynamics, the water was colder than the ice it came from.  Don't ask me how.  Not to be swayed from some puny, shallow, hypothermia-inducing water, I threw my swimsuit on and floated in the water with Nick and Andrew.  When my feet began petitioning my other organs to support a vote of no confidence towards my brain on account of incompetence, I decided it was probably time to get out.  Andrew and I also had a really good time skipping rocks on the river.

Our first organized event was a drive to Mariposa Grove to see the giant sequoias.  I think I have been to the grove three or four times from previous trips to Yosemite.  Personally, this is one of my favorite places to visit on the planet.  There is just something about these giants among God's creations that inspires the soul.

No picnic benches, but that's not a problem!  We ate lunch right by the car.  I popped a capri sun drink pouch on the concrete and it made a huge blast of sound like a gunshot.  Not so wise, perhaps, but it was really fun!

Ya, they're big!

Hope this picture gives some perspective.  Hard to capture pure majesty with puny megapixels.  This picture contains the lower 1% or so of the tree called the Grizzly Giant.  And I don't exagerate...

A fallen Sequoia betrays its lower regions to the world.

After hiking the outer loop in the Mariposa Grove, which apexes at the Grizzly Giant and passes many interesting sites in about 2 miles of walking, we hopped back in the car to make our way to Glacier Point, a popular lookout point that provides view of many of the famous sites Yosemite has to offer. 

Half Dome is on the left.  Vernal and Nevada falls can be seen in the lower right.  On a previous trip, I hiked to the top of half dome with my Dad and a couple other scouts.

 

Here is a closer shot of the two waterfalls.  The lower is Vernal, where we will hike on Monday.

It has been a long day of fun already, and we are all tired and hungry.  We hurry down the mountain to our campsite to cook dinner.  The highlight of the night was going out to a nearby meadow to look at the stars.  Dad gave us a tour of the constellations.  We saw a satellite or two, a bright shooting star.  Nick's green lazer pointer helped in pointing out the stars in the constellations.