Yosemite June 2010 Day 1 Mariposa Grove

Our first family adventure of the summer of 2010 began on June 21st when we drove down to Bass Lake to meet up with my mom who was staying at one of her timeshare condos. Some other family members had been there the previous couple days, but they had left before we got there (I guess they heard we were coming--smart people).

As soon as we rendezvous-ed (I took three and a half years of French, but have no recollection whatsoever of how to conjugate verbs in the past tense. Rendezvous-amos?--sorry Ms. Hires) with my mom, we made the trip to one of the truly best and happiest places on earth--Yosemite. This was our second trip to Yosemite, the first being the previous year 2009, on my birthday, September 5 (I'll wait while you update your calendar).

Welcome back. Our destination was Mariposa Grove, which is close to the south entrance of the park. To be honest, I wasn't very enthusiastic about looking at a bunch of trees. You're probably having a hard time believing that, thinking back to this previous blog post and all of its pictures, not to mention the other 174 pictures from which I spared you, but it's true. In fact, I spent a good part of the trip saying, with feigned enthusiasm, things like "Hey guys, come look at this. It's a tree," and, "Oh my goodness, check this out. It's a tree!"

I believe we're looking at Fallen Monarch

Despite my sarcastic comments, I did make a positive contribution to the hike: I gave us trail names. (Well, I didn't necessarily come up with all the names, but I came up with the idea and thus feel I can take credit for the names). Lennon was Cougar (after the fearsome cat, not the equally fearsome, and sometimes alluring--to men other than me of course--female), Abby was Digicam (guess what she was doing during the hike), Meghan named herself "Long-Trail" because she felt like the trail was going on forever--5 minutes after we started. Rachel was "Hiker" (I didn't make that one up). I cannot recall my trail name. Trail names always make hiking better. (Just ask my favorite contemporary magazine writer, Steve Friedman. By the way, check the date on this hilarious story, it was published after our trip. So I can still take credit for deciding to give the family trail names. I wasn't influenced by him. Although it's quite possible that he was influenced by me.)

A bachelor and Bachelor and Three Graces

Grizzly Giant

Long Trail inside a tall tree

Mariposa Grove museum--closed when we got there.The cool lady in the baseball hat is my mommy.

As we were walking back from the museum, we took a smaller trail--it's always best to go back a different way than the way you came when possible, more adventurous--we saw a weasel trotting up the trail with a mouse or something resembling a mouse in its mouth. It walked right up to about 3 feet in front of us, then hopped off the trail passed around us, jumped back on the trail,and just kept on going. It was AWESOME, one of my favorite animal sightings ever. Here's the sad part: The picture below is the closest we came to documenting the sighting.

There was a weasel here a second before we took this blurry picture

We had some bad luck with our camera on this trip. A lot of our pictures turned out blurry, including a picture of Rachel and I posing in front of the two trees growing together called Faithful Couple, as well as some pictures of a really cool woodpecker. Dang it! (I apologize for my language.)

Faithful Couple

Photo courtesy of Gayle Green  (and her reliable camera)

Our wildlife sighting didn't end after we left park boundaries. On the way back to the condo, we spotted an unusual sight, did a u-turn and documented this:

Some random peacock on some random person's property

As excited as I was about going to Yosemite, the kids were equally excited about going swimming in the pool at the condo. They would have been super happy just staying at the pool for the few days that we were there. So on the hike we heard a lot of comments such as "how much longer till we get to go swimming?" and "I wish we were swimming." It was starting to get late as we were heading back and I was afraid that we wouldn't make it to the condo before the pool was closed, so when we got there with only about 15 minutes before Adult Swim, I pulled up next to the pool, and Rachel and the kids headed over there while I went back to the condo to fetch the towels. As I was watching them walk away I realized I had just dropped the kids off at the pool--literally! I chuckled to myself and went to get the towels.