Yosemite Trip 2012-Day 1

On Sunday January 15th, Britt and I woke up at 6:45am PST and started up our computers. We both navigated to recreation.gov and set up our cell phones as well. At 6:59:59 we raised our fingers and as soon as the clock turned to 7:00 am PST we started clicking our mice furiously and dialing the same number repeatedly only to receive a busy tone. What would compel us to such madness? Yosemite Valley campground reservations. Yosemite National Park opens its valley campground reservations five months in advance up to the 15th of the month and you'd better believe that there are plenty of people out there that know this already. If you are not prepared, you will not get a reservation. Since we had a wedding to attend on May 18th and did not want to struggle our way through the hoards of people after Memorial Day, we had a very short window in which to get camping reservations. We were successful in getting four nights reserved (3 in North Pines and 1 in Lower Pines) between May 22nd and 25th. Happy with the results, we then walked out to the kitchen to get breakfast and to allow our heart rates to come back down.Just a little over five months later, our early morning wrist exercise paid off as we prepared to make our second trip to Yosemite National Park. On May 20th, we arrived back home after a 1,500+ mile road trip to Phoenix for Britt's step-sister's wedding. After lunch on May 21st, we dropped off our dog with friends and headed off again in our car, this time towards one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is a really nice drive along the eastern end of the Sierra Nevadas. I especially love the section just before Bridgeport to the June Lake Loop. Here, you get great views of Sawtooth Ridge (above), Dunderberg Peak, Mono Lake, Carson Peak, and many others. Because the Sierras had experienced extremely low snowfall amounts during the past winter the Tioga Pass Road had opened a couple of weeks earlier, which allowed us to enter the park from the east and see a part of the park we hadn't been able to the year before. At the entrance gate (above), just west of Lee Vining, we took our traditional picture when entering a National Park and then drove to a dirt pullout off the road at Tuolumne Meadows to scout out a possible trailhead for our hike on the following day. We walked to the banks of the Tuolumne River and looked around a little. Because we didn't find any bear lockers here we decided that it might be better to try a different trailhead (more on that to come in the next post). We drove back east and out of the park towards June Lake, where we had made a 1 night reservation at a local motel. On the way, we stopped at the boat dock on Silver Lake (right) and enjoyed the view of Carson Peak and Horsetail Falls. After checking into the June Lake Motel, we walked to the Sierra Inn and enjoyed spaghetti and lasagna. Back at the motel, we relaxed and prepared ourselves for our first full day in the park and the longest hike we've ever done.