Happy Belated Traveling...Yosemite

When we find dead things, we pick them up for photos!

Too much fun, too little time [to blog this year].  The extreme misfortune of this first-world problem overwhelms me.  I digress.  Half a year ago I got to go to Yosemite with some of the most lovely folks in the Bay Area.  Our last adventure was a bike trip up to Samuel P Taylor State Park and this time it was a weekend of wandering in the Sierras on foot, snowshoe and by Subaru.  In a belated fashion, may I present:

10 YOSEMITE HIGHLIGHTS

Saturday February 2nd and Sunday February 3rd, 2013

#10 Finally seeing Eddie Murphy's, Coming to America

For our February 2nd entertainment, Alison, Nathan, Jason and I tried finding Groundhog Day in the bed and breakfast's lobby collection of DVDs and VHS tapes.  Instead, we watched Coming to America.  I had no idea how incomplete my life was having never seen this gem.  True to form, I saw the first 45 minutes, fell asleep, and woke up for the closing credits.  Phew, glad I "saw" that one.

#9 Shoe Chains!

These

I have this playfully competitive relationship with friction, and it usually punks me successfully.

So, since we expected it to be slushy/icy in Yosemite, Jason rented snowshoes for us from Sporty B in the city.  He strapped three pairs of snowshoes all over his bike and attach six ski poles to his handlebars so he could get everything home on BART.  Epic effort.

Not These

(Un)fortunately, the trails were pretty well packed, so I ended up strapping the snowshoes to my pack and borrowing Nathan's shoe chains to keep me from pulling the comedic banana peel-style slip and fall time and again during our hike.  I  occasionally postholed up to my bike shorts tan line, but whats a girl to do?

Thanks shoe chains!

#8 Sunset Reflecting off El Capitan

It was wild.  The brilliant sunset following a cloudy day in Yosemite Valley speaks for itself.

Saturday February 2nd, 2013

#7 Action Pants and Hiking Skirts

Specifically, at BBQ establishments.

You know, I love three things:

• freedom
• fashion (haha, that's a joke!)
• eating food

Sometimes I'm just so star-struck by functionality.  What?!?!  This material wicks moisture away from my skin?  I must have it.  Moisture next to my skin is just unreasonable.  What can I say?  The utilitarian fashion of activewear really makes me feel good about owning it.  Gators.  Merino wool.  Gortex?  Stop it, I'm blushing.

In conclusion, pulled pork for dinner and being able to pull off my long johns to hike in a skirt in the afternoon are both really...fashionable?  Moving on.

#6 Ice Bacon

A real cave formation I learned about on a tour through Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, cave bacon is a ribbon of minerals hanging like a ventral fin from a rock.  Cave bacon grows drop by drip as dissolved minerals accumulate along its edge.  And oh, it's a hit.  Everybody talks about the cave bacon after the walk.  Trust me. (PHOTO: bacon encased in ice.  Not ice bacon.)

"Real" Ice Bacon--see below

FACT: Ice bacon monocles are great for correcting mild astigmatism.

To contrast, ice bacon is part of my imagination.  And wow.  Well, we saw some ice bacon on our Muir Lake hike, and it was pretty neato.  I told everyone about it, even though it's not real.  I even led everyone to think I had a really great name for the ice sheet accumulating on the granite.  I love science and captive audiences.

#5 Scarves and Sunscreen

California weather, you're the best!

Those are the two things I wore to compliment my t-shirt most of Dewey Point snowshoe.  Whether we walked through white fir carpeted in chartreuse lichen or tested the strength of the frozen creek before crossing, the majority of our scenic hike was among sunshine and warmth.  (PHOTO: Nathan's lichen mustache.)

#4 Breaking and Entering

...into our bed and breakfast at 12:30am.  When Jason and I showed up without a legal means of late check-in, I took a lesson from my former Homestead-inhabiting friends and did what anyone without access to a key would do.  I removed the screen to the window and hopped into the living room from the front porch.  Let's call it instinct. 

approximate view while breaking and entering

Great news, I chose the right window!  Jason and I Goldilock-ed our way around the house, trying all three bowls of porridge,  jumping on both beds, and then fell asleep immediately.  Nathan and Alison presented the key to us when they arrived the next morning from the lock box right outside the door.

#3 Snow Interaction Control

Choosing to hike on the snow for leisure is fun.  Example: warm sunshine on a dry deck while we ate granola in the foothills makes bagging my feet in grocery store bags more comedic and less depressing.  The 50 degree sunshine made the snow a good bit prettier too.

#2 Chicken Cam

As of February, Nathan and Alison were young urban homesteaders whose three young ladies had recently hit chicken puberty.  (They had started laying eggs.)  Like all parents questioning whether or not their adolescents are making good life choices, they installed surveillance equipment to monitor their day-to-day activity.  Nathan and Alison call this Chicken Cam.  Since having feathered children, they've revised their interests, hobbies when compared to life B.C. (before chickens).  

Chicken cam rules.  We spent a good bit of time creepin' on the chickens and Tanya during breakfast, who was house sitting and raking the yard.  The moral of the story?  [Feathered] child surveillance is:

• very entertaining
• an excellent idea

#1 Lazy Yosemite

Usually, Yosemite is x-treme.  Traffic is x-tremely congested, bears are x-tremely active in campgrounds, hikes are expected to be x-tremely strenuous and you end up x-tremely wrung out from too much fun in too little time (in the summer).  It was so worth it to me to take a risk with the weather and come away from a weekend with smiles and stories of hare dens and waterfall rainbows than to have knots in your shoulders and a nose full of exhaust sitting in traffic on the valley floor.  The balance of accessibility for the parks and hoping no on else wants to do cool things gives me mixed feelings about popular locations.  Anyway, we lucked out this time.