Just so you know, we didn't intentionally front-load our summer like this. Everything was booked individually, at different times, and just had to be done when it was done. This particular weekend was booked before any of those other things, all of which had to happen when they happened. After all this is over (and a couple other things), the rest of my summer will be spent relaxing at home - that is, when I'm not studying like mad. One day I'll blog about this thing I keep taking classes for, but today is not that day.
When we came to Yosemite last summer, we really packed in a lot of the good stuff. We worried that we wouldn't have anything new to see, which is kind of laughable now. We saw
plenty of good stuff. The beauty of this place just cannot be contained.
In the case of this trip, the beauty overflowed outside the northeast boundary of Yosemite, into Mono Lake. Now, we were camping at Wawona, which is the very southerly-most campsite of Yosemite. This was a very good thing the night we got there, because we left after work and it's kind of a long drive and we were dangerously tired. But the night of Mono lake, it was not quite as good: it's a good 3-hour drive from tent-flap to lakeshore. Incredibly scenic, with plenty of things to stop and oogle over, but 3 hours of it.
But it was worth the drive - let me tell you about Mono Lake. It has all these salt/sand stalagmites poking up out of the water that are just a beauty to behold. Since I'm no geologist, that's pretty much all I can tell you about that.
We wanted to be there at sunset, so we had time to kill. We made our way to Bodie, a real-live ghost town nearby. Here's some pictures of it.
Now that I've got that out of the way, a word of warning about Bodie: it closes at 6. What that means is, you'd better be seeing the place in your rear-view at 6. If not, you will be accosted as you walk up to your car at 6:03 by a park ranger who is HUNGRY to show you how powerful he is and how
very lucky you are that he's being
generous enough to let you drive away without a ticket. And he'll tell you stories of times he's done that in the past, just to show he means it - all the while, keeping you there even longer past the magical 6:00 hour. His pure, uncensored arrogance made me angry at the time. But looking back, I feel a little sorry for him. It must be a rough life when you have to bully your paying guests who overstayed their welcome in a ghost town by 3 whole entire minutes.
Anyway, back to the lake. We got some nice sunset pictures and were getting all ready to take star trail pics, and then one of David's camera batteries died. We were rescued by a rinky-dink grocery store nearby because they actually had this obscure camera battery in stock.
Best decision ever.
See that? That's the northern lights. At least that's what the other photographers said.
I looked it up. Yes, they can come this far south sometimes.
We had such fun with star trail pictures that we did it again the next night, only this time it was from the valley floor, looking up at all the iconic Yosemite rock formations.
See those little stars that look like they're
on El Capitan? Those are actually rock climbers, camping out
on the rock face for the night.
Other than that, we also hiked up to Nevada Falls. It made me grateful for physical fitness. There was a lot of uphill, yo.
Other than that, we explored the many beautiful landscapes in the valley.
Wildlife we saw: Scorpions! We found one under our tent when we were packing up, and we half-wondered if we hadn't maybe accidentally packed the little guy up with us from the Valley of Fire. Nope, Yosemite's got scorpions! And, we saw a bear. We just didn't capture any shots because it tore across the street right in front of our car and then barreled down the hill on the other side before we could even gather our wits about us.
It's official, it's not a myth, there really are bears in Yosemite.
