Yosemite 2011 part 2

In the temporarily-drier morning of our second day, we stopped by Tunnel View to view things. It was almost boringly spectacular, the Paganini of scenery. But is was beautiful and we went there a total of five times on the trip to enjoy the ever-changing lighting.




We decided to take a hike to Mirror lake and ran into the Barches on the way. It was glorious, heavenly, lush and majestic with perfect lighting and great weather [in Daddy's opinion at least]. It even felt pretty wild compared to the rest of the valley. We took the loop trail to avoid the crush of people and the kids all walked for the two-point-something miles of the loop.




The dogwood was magical.








Little was absolutely obsessed with snow, as she has been for a couple years.The lack of suitable snow-wear didn't seem to deter her.




Epic snowfight with maybe an under-epic amount of snow to work with:





We ended up in a beautiful meadow directly below half-dome:


After hiking back, we drove around for a bit until we found this handsome young black bear:


We went back to Swinging Bridge for a late lunch and because it's just so darn awesome.


Buddy was one happy dude in the hiking backpack but otherwise he merely tolerated all the fuss and cold.










A[u]nt Chisnap took the girls exploring all over the meadow. They ended up making light-sabers out of sticks, which they didn't necessarily need to be in Yosemite for. Nevertheless, so much classic majesticness all around has got to have some benefits, right?








Our last stop was a drive up to Tuolumne Grove. It snowed a lot, so Daddy and Little just ran out and played in the thigh-deep snow for a bit.


Little loves lots of things but there is little she loves more than snow.




A view up Yosemite valley on the way back from Tuolumne:


Tunnel view, again:


At night, Daddy went with his friend J "Excessively-[and-wastefully]-tall-for-a-non-basketball-player" Tahlbow to shoot some pictures under moonlight. Lots of low-lying clouds and fog, coupled with short battery life and a late moon rising [a few days past full] made the job challenging but we each we able to salvage a couple decent pictures from the night:


Upper Yosemite fall with a moonbow:


Tunnel view again, El Capitan is on the left, Half Dome is in the distance and Bridalveil is on the right.


Another hotel night then one last day of fun before heading home: stay tuned for part 3...

Yosemite 2011 part 1

Last week we took off to spend a few days in Yosemite. We had worked it out so that the Barches and the Tahlbows would be there at the same time as us. And A[u]nt Chisnap flew down from WA to come with us. So a multicolored day-long caravan of heavily-packed Odysseys descended upon Yosemite despite the doom-saying of the weathermen [more on that very soon].

So, about the weather. We knew it was going to be quite cold, so we came prepared [preparing is what Mommy does second-best]:





And it was pretty fun getting all bundled up in the tent. Littlest [Bud] was so wrapped up in warm stuff that he achieved spherical proportions. Both girls were drowning in a sea of sleeping bags. A couple things that we didn't prepare sufficiently for:

1. Rain. Hard, 33-degree rain all night long without ceasing.
2. Our rickety 10-year-old "circus tent" has--surprise!--no rain fly. We've slept in it dozens of times and somehow neglected to notice this. Whoops!



So here's the order of events on our first night at Wawona:

1. Hastily set up tent in the dark and rain. It held itself up about as well as Harold Camping's prophesies do.

2. Notice that pools of rain were accumulating on the roof of the tent.

3. Steal the tarp from under A[u]nt Chisnap's tent. It actually significantly increased the structural integrity of the circus tent.

4. Go to sleep.

5. Wake up periodically. Mommy: move further uphill as the feet get progressively wetter. Daddy: tell Littler to go back to sleep.

6. Daddy wakes up to tell Littler to go back to sleep and discovers that he is wet all over. He also discovers that there is about 10 gallons of water accumulated on the roof of the tent UNDER the tarp.

7. Daddy traces the drip from the roof-top reservoir and finds that it lands on Littler's head. Perhaps relatedly, she is soaked from head to toe but is actually asleep.

8. Daddy goes outside to heroically avoid having to deal with Littler drain the roof of the tent. He ends up wandering around taking pictures in the pre-dawn light:



By the time we all got up, we discovered 5 sleeping bags that were absolutely drenched and 2 that were plenty wet. So naturally we ate breakfast and drove off to go have fun and deal with all that wet stuff later. As it turns out, we didn't return for 52 hours [finally wussing out and getting a hotel], prompting the park ranger to inspect our tent for decomposing bodies. On the bright side, we got a nice early start to the day!

Our first stop in the valley was Swinging Bridge. It is a terrific spot for the kids to just run around with great views of the Three Brothers.




Little and Littler paused for about 0.023 seconds to pretend that they aren't engaged in a life-long ultraviolent blood feud to the death:


Little, as always, is prone to fits of radical joy:










Next we took the little walk to Bridalveil Fall--presumably because we didn't feel like we were soaked enough yet. And more drenched we did get [check out Mommy's jammies that she wore everywhere--stylin!]:


We also hiked and explored for a couple hours around Lower Yosemite Fall, which was damp. Also: awesome. We stood on the spot of one of Daddy's most awesomest heroes--John Muir--had built a cabin.


We searched endlessly for herps but found nothing--not even a slender salamander! Little is a great little herp flipper.


The to a warm, dry hotel room for the night. Daddy's mountain-man self-identity took some major buckshot but secretly inside he was ready to be dry. The girls just pretty much rolled with it.

Part 2 coming up...

Kids Have the Silliest Ideas

Little: Can I have a cookie?
Mommy: No, not right now.
Little: But I really want a cookie!
Mommy: Sorry, we're not having cookies right now.
Little:  If you let me have a cookie, I'll let you come visit me when I'm older and don't live with you anymore.
Mommy:  How sweet of you.  I hope you let me come visit you no matter how bad a mom I am.

My New Personal Blog

Hey guess what?  I (Amanda) have a new blog that I started a few weeks ago.  It's probably boring for most people, but strangely enough, I keep writing on it because I'm pretty obsessed with running and exercise these days.  It's called Farfenuken.  Today I have exciting news!

Weekend

To save us from a weekend of drudgery, friends invited us to go with them to Ed Levin park to hang out, eat, and hike a little bit. Having heard some great things about the raptors there, and not wanting to, you know, stay home and work, we jetted off to have some fun.

Littler was maybe a bit less than totally enthused to hike up the mountain.




Littler absolutely adores Lizard.


They used this rock as a pillow.




At the top of the "mountain" there were a couple guys getting ready to hang-glide off and back down to the bottom. The kids were fascinated...


...but eager for the spectacle to end so they could...


...well, you know:








No, Littlest is not wearing Littler's jacket as a pair of pants with a spurious hood that he needs to keep warm because he overflowed his diaper and his other pants are soaking wet and it's cold. It only looks that way.




Littlest wanted to join the mud party. Daddy had to take him far, far away. He went for it like a carrier pigeon.




We ended up seeing 6 species of raptors: kestrel, harrier, white-tailed kite, red-tail, red-shoulder, and TV. Not bad for a lazy saturday afternoon. And we threw together a little Provencal dinner at our place and watched a movie. Thanks, Boni and A-Ron!