Wednesday 14th May
Today we'd planned to head into Yosemite Valley to see the sites there. I'd been searching online (when the wifi worked that is - I'm convinced that the whole camp is using the same 2mb connection) to see what was suitable. Last time, we'd picked a walk that was much too steep. 6 years on and I was looking for child friendly walks ;) I'd decided on the Yosemite Falls then moving on to Mirror Lake. With that all decided, we headed over to the restaurant next door to get some breakfast. It was 9:05.
There seemed to be only three people working in the place - one cooking, one woman serving and a young boy who had probably been told never to carry more than one thing at a time. I say this because our conversation with him went something like this...
"Good Morning, would you like some coffee?"
"Yes Please, two if you would"
Off he wanders...
Comes back with two cups.. puts them down.
Goes off and gets the coffee pot, pours the coffee...
"would you like cream?"
"Yes please"
Off he wanders again...
Back with the cream in a small pot.
He looks at us.
"Can we possibly have a menu?"
"Sure"
Off he wanders...
You get the idea.
On another circle around the room he comes past again...
"Are you local?" he asks
"Not with these accents I don't think so" I replied
"Ah I thought you were local... Would you like some coffee?"
I pick up my still full cup.
"No thanks"
"er, did I get you menus?"
"Yes, we've already ordered with the lady over there"
"Oh, OK" and off he wandered.
Now, some might think it was all plain sailing after that, but no. Turns out that although we'd given our order, the woman had somehow lost it. She comes wandering by after we'd been sitting looking at each other for 30 minutes.
"Your order won't be long hun.."
5 minutes later..
"I'll go chase up with the chef. I'll be right back"
5 minutes later still..
"OK, I'm having trouble finding your order, can you remind (!) me what you wanted and I'll see if I can find it!"
We tell here what we wanted as she scribbled it all down. Odd thing is there's no one else waiting for food so the kitchen can not have had any one else's order in there. She wasn't fooling anyone.
10 minutes later (about the time it'd take to cook the breakfast from scratch) she 'finds' our order.
I still leave a 10% tip.
So it was now gone 10 before we got into the car to head off. The drive is almost a hour to just get into the place.
On the way in we passed many burnt out trees which had been hit by the big wild fires last year. Some of the trees were charcoal whilst others had burning all up the bark and branches, with leaves all dead and orange - but with a small hint of green on one edge as it starts to grow again. As a famous mathematician once said "life finds a way".
The sky was a glorious blue again all day - there's no rain on the forecast anywhere. It wasn't the 100'F that was promised on the forecast, indeed there was a pleasant breeze near the rivers that kept if cool. Better still was when we walked up to Lower Yosemite falls - the water spray was coming down onto the observation areas and it was a glorious cooling mist by the time it reached us.
We took loads of photos and then I headed over to the big rocks on the river side to try and get a little closer.
I got a little closer but I wasn't confident to get right up to the bottom as some others had. As it was all about leaping from bolder to bolder it wasn't something to get wrong, especially on holiday!
After the walk back from the falls, we jumped on the shuttle bus and got off at the other side of the valley. Here we walked the mile or so over to the Mirror Lake which is a lake at the top part of one of the rivers. It's normally very still, allowing for good reflections in the water - hence the Mirror name.
The walk back was quite tiring - it was getting very warm by now. But we made it OK. Back on the shuttle, we stopped off at the store in the valley to grab a couple of bits for our stay - including some soap powder, so we can do some washing over the next couple of days.
We drove back to the hotel, the sun was going down so it was quite difficult to drive into the sun all the time.
Here's the full journey!
Once in we popped over to the restaurant again for some dinner - this time it was all uneventful. Back to the hotel again, this time for showers as we were still dirty and tired from the long day.