Day 26, July 1 2009, Rest Day in Yosemite National Park

Waking up at the late, late hour of 8am, the party tent residents jumped out of their sleeping bags, ready for a day full of exploring in the Yosemite. We perused the park’s map during our oatmeal breakfast (except Joe, who chose to ride his bike 8 miles to buy Pop Tarts instead of forcing himself to choke down some “already chewed food”) and decided that we wanted to check out the Giant Sequoias first. The team all piled into our two vans and hit the road.

We ended up taking a wrong turn at some point (I just learned this while I was typing) and we ended up in the Valley. Luckily, this proved to be a great mistake, because we accidentally drove by Bridevail Fall. From the van, we saw the incredible waterfall, and immediately ordered a halt on the vehicle. We all piled out, and began walking to the waterfall. The walk was very short, and we quickly arrived at the base of this incredible fall. The really neat thing about Bridevail, is that instead of the water falling down into a river or a lake, it falls more like a mist, onto the massive boulders and rocks below (Hence the relation to a vail). Since it wasn’t strong, pounding water, we were able to climb up almost to the base and feel the falling mist. The climb among the huge, slippery rocks was so thrilling, since you would be stretching as far as your limbs would allow in order to make it up to the next rock while making sure your feet don’t slip out from underneath you. At some point, we were able to walk through the fast moving waters that ran between all of the boulders and rocks, and at least twice I almost slipped down the rapids. The overall Bridevail experience was incredible, and we took tons of pictures while climbing and walking in the water. Eventually, we made our way back down and boarded back into the vans on the way to the Sequoias.

I guess that we found out we made a wrong turn, and made our way back towards the Visitor’s Center for lunch. We grabbed some awesome taco salads and meandered around the stores while our group got situated and decided who wanted to continue exploring the park and who wanted to stay for Internet access. Tesfay and I made our third matching tshirt purchase when we both bought a eco-friendly green Yosemite shirt. This brought my tshirt purchases for the trip up to four (planning on one at all major stops. Yes Mom, more tshirts) Once we were ready to roll, we got back in the van (back to the name of the Pleasure Van, since certain individuals usually choose to adventure over business/internet access) and began to drive to the Great Sequois.

We planned on visiting a few other waterfalls on our way back from the Sequois, but since we had such a late start in the morning (not leaving until 11) and had a long stop at the Visitor’s Center, we ended up only having time with the trees. Also, the massive traffic delay slowed us down, and it took us about an hour and forty-five minutes to get there. Since I was born with the ability to fall asleep incredibly easily in cars, I slept for pretty much the whole ride to the forest. It was kind of a running joke for the rest of the day, that we made this long trip out to see just a bunch of trees, mostly due to Tesfay’s demands to see the trees. Once we finally arrived, we joked around that the trees had better be absolutely incredible, or else. Despite all our sarcastic jokes though, the Seqouis really were amazing. We walked to two of the main trees in the forest, the Grizzly Giant and the California Tree. The Grizzly Giant was named very appropriately, since it was a gigantic tree with stubby, brushy branches. Very grizzly indeed. The California Tree was neat, since it was the only remaining Sequoia that you could walk through. A tunnel had been carved into the base, and we took a picture of all of us in the walkway. We gazed at all the carved initials in the tree for a while, amazed that some of the dates in the trees went back as far as the 1800’s. We eventually decided to turn back, since it was getting late and we had a long drive back to the campsite before dinner.

I stayed awake on the ride home, and thoroughly enjoyed all of the amazing views throughout the park. We even drove right through a controlled forest fire! The flames went all the way up to the side of the road! We jammed out the whole way home while watching the gorgeous scenery around us. Once back at the campsite, we enjoyed red beans and rice and ground turkey for dinner before building up another campfire. We reminisced about the day and the climb into the park while sitting around the fire for quite some time before we all gradually went to bed.