2 days camping in Yosemite National Park

As a farewell to summer days –oh and what a summer it has been! Jeff and I decided to go camping in Yosemite National Park for 3 days/2 nights. We departed Walnut Creek (very early) on Monday morning and drove the 3.5 hours to the national park where we set up camp in Yosemite Valley, what would be our communal campground home for the next 2 nights!

Monday’s 6+ mile hike gave us a great overview of Lower Yosemite Valley. The trail was a pathway for both bikes and pedestrians. We only took one interpretive trail that led to Mirror Lake and then shortly there after realized we could have stayed on our original path, but seriously… where is the adventure in that!

Here you can see a great picture of Half Dome and Mirror Lake and the two of us taking breaks at various points throughout the day. We were taking it easy our first day and planned a much more challenging hike for Tuesday!

This was the first camping experience Jeff and I had with one another and we found out quickly that we are very capable and compatible campers together. We cooked amazing food, made friends with our fellow camp mates (even though they were way more into Rock Climbing than us!) and even managed to keep all our supplies out of reach of the many bears that prowl the area after dark! YES – I actually heard but did not see one on Monday night! There had been 150 bear break-ins to vehicles this year – we did not want to be 151!

Yosemite is gorgeous and it was so nice to get away from civilization for a couple days! Turn off the cell phones and computers and just be in nature for awhile. On Tuesday, we decided to do an incline hike to Vernal Falls. It’s a 3 mile round-trip, no big deal right? So our adventure began with a warm-up hike to Happy Isles where the trail head began.However, we were attacked by gnats in the first 20 minutes of the hike – we stopped briefly to apply some much needed bug spray but they persisted and we thought our day hike was doomed! But some genius thinking on my part- we jumped on the shuttle bus and outsmarted the little critters who couldn’t keep up and follow us the rest of the way to the trailhead!

Once we arrived to the trail head at Happy Isle, we really started to see what we were in for on this day hike. It was 1.5 miles to the Vernal Falls and it was all UP HILL and to make things even more interesting - to get to the very top of the waterfall you had to climb an additional 700 ROCK STAIRS!

Here is a picture of the stairs ahead of us and resting at the half way point to ask someone to take our picture. It was beautiful and we just knew it would be worth it once we got to the top! And the thing that kept us going - the return trip was all downhill!

Jeff also took this fantastic shot of the waterfall and a rainbow. Postcard perfect, isn't it!

We kept climbing and climbing and in my mind I would count 1,2,3...50!Rest! 1,2,3...100! Rest! With a lot of willpower we got to the top and looked out along the entire valley. What a site!

At the top of the Vernal Falls we were relieved to have made it, we snapped several pictures and then found a shady place to take a rest and have an energy snack. Do you think you have to worry about Bears in Yosemite? Not as much as you have to worry about ground squirrels, we had fun playing keep away with our Cliff Bars as they wanted a tasty treat too! Back at our campsite we actually named two of them: Bruno and Betty!

Going back down the trail from Vernal Falls was a breeze - we even began to give those visitors that were making the climb an encouraging word or two! I know hearing "You are almost there!" from a stranger would have empowered me. The funniest Laugh Out Loud moments came when we were first leaving the top of the falls. A woman was climbing the last 10 steps with her husband and she said something about him promising her that there was a tram to take you back down! She asked us if that was true and we just laughed and had to dash her hopes of an easier and quicker exit!

We were exhausted Tuesday night and were in bed before 9pm. But we had a plan of waking up at 6am and taking an early morning "sunrise" hike to see Yosemite Falls and the sun come up over Half Dome across a meadow. Although it was the only time we left the cell phone on to be our alarm, it was everything we imagined. Here are some of our parting shots of Yosemite, complete with the only bear I ever met while visiting!

Shortly after the morning hike we packed up our campsite and it was back to Walnut Creek!