July 10, 2006

• LONG WEEKEND Part II

  woke up and decided to look out the back side of the tent and off in
  the horizon we could see the sierras.... packed up everything and was
  about to go, when we were distracted by marmots...  pat took some
  nice close-ups... none of which i have...so when i have the time i can
  steal them from him.... i won't bother posting mine b/c you can't
  really see them... anyway... so we had a slight marmot detour and we
  were on our way back to schulman grove...but not with out two other
  detours...

  the first one was just going off the more managed 4x4 road.... hiked
  around a bit...and found some really cool rocks...pat was reminiscing a
  lot since this was his summer field area....

  
  white mountain and bristlecone pines below

  the second detour was to crooked creek... more reminiscing for pat...
  
  the sign.. and pat in front of the clarence hall lodge.....

  had a lot more stops and realized it was pretty cool looking straight at the sierras instead of up at them....

  stopped off at schulman grove and took the bristlecone cabin trail....
  had lunch and said buh bye to the ancient bristlecone pine forest
  

  drove around mammoth a bit and picked up some groceries and decided to
  camp at the same place the first night... which luckily was the way we
  had left it...

  
  the previous site from the first night..sloppy joe's for dinner... pat making ice cream... the final product

  after a yummy dinner pat made ice cream... and it's definitely
  YUMMY!  packed up and the next morning headed over to yosemite b/c
  pat has never been there... mainly i wanted to take him to the valley
  b/c we had driven the high sierra portion earlier.... i hadn't been
  there since the cascades trip we all took in 2001...so my memory was a
  bit fuzzy...

  anyway... we stopped off at bridalveil
  falls... and i can tell you there was WAAAAAY more water than the time
  we had all went... it was awesome! (obviously...we had all gone in
  september.... and it's july and there was so much snow this year...)

  

  stopped off at the first picnic spot... which turned out to be the
  worst... i do NOT recommend stopping near the sentinel.... at first i
  thought it was okay... nice picnic bench in the shade... pat went to go
  to the bathroom.. and i was taking our food out... a few minutes later
  i hear some buzzing... and then i realize i'm being eaten alive... so
  i'm frantically looking for the bug spray at the same time i'm swatting
  these mosquitos away... and we try a picnic bench near the river...
  also not a good place b/c the mosquitos are still around... luckily had
  the bug spray... but still... i ended up with at least 15 bites or
  so... it was funny b/c there was a family eating at the picnic table
  nearby...and there was a kid that was complaining about why mosquitos
  need to live... and the other two kids were wearing their sweatshirts
  and running away from the mosquitos....

  after the lunch the mosquito's feast on us.... we headed over to the
  visitor's center and watched the movie....and walked to yosemite
  falls... which was also awesome as well....

  
  yosemite falls (upper and lower)...and lower yosemite falls...

  and
  then headed up for the traditinal yosemite valley picture... but this
  time it was more beautiful then the last time b/c there was a beautiful
  rainbow coming off of bridalveil falls.... my zoom sucks, but if you
  look really closely at the falls you can see the bit of rainbow...

  
  drove home... and had a low key 4th....

  the end....

  • 2:33 pm
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