Yosemite, Remix

Having been to Yosemite before, I was really excited to go back, this time with my friend Caroline. But the excitement was also tempered by two facts: 1) I was 16 weeks pregnant and 2) Caroline had never camped or backpacked before. I was worried that I would overdue it and that she might be miserable and/or hate me forever. :) So I planned and prayed. Most important to me was following through on a promise made roughly 6 years ago to take her hiking. I can say without hesitation that God answered my prayers! This was one of the most fun backpacking trips I've ever been on. Some of that, I think, was lower expectations on my part, some of it was Caroline being an awesome companion, and most of it was grace.

Start of the Panorama Trail (plus my tiny baby bump) Later that day we crossed over the waterfall down in the distance.

We entered Yosemite mid-week and spent the first two nights in the valley at a campsite while we worked out wilderness permits, visited Mariposa grove, and took some time to rest from travel and get acclimated. Yosemite is slammed with tourists in July, but since it was mid-week, it was less slammed. Barely. :)

Caroline making bacon. yum!

Mariposa grove (and me being obnoxious about my belly)

When the weekend came, we took a tour bus to glacier point (while listening to one of the most interesting tour guides ever), then hiked the panorama trail 7+ miles to the backcountry campground Little Yosemite Valley in the shadow of half dome. The panorama trail certainly lives up to its name! And except for a small portion where it takes you straight up and over some serious hills, most of it is going down. When we started the trail, there was a group of college students starting at the same time. I barely noticed them but half way through we caught up and started conversing. We felt pretty proud of ourselves for keeping pace with fit college students! It was also fun to see people's reactions when they discovered that Caroline had never done this before and I was pregnant. hehe. I have to admit, I like shocking/surprising people :p

Caroline on the edge of the world.

Morning coffee in the Backcountry campground.
Behind those trees is the backside of half dome.

We spent the night and then backpacked down the John Muir Trail for, I think, another 6 miles. That trail was brutal on our knees, it's literally switchback after steep switchback. I believe it gains 4000 feet of elevation in about 4 miles. The last time I was there, I was backpacking up the trail, which was psychological torture. It was helpful to have that experience in the back of my mind as I slogged down this time. I liked it much better. Haha!

On the John Muir Trail headed back down to the valley

Once we got down, we had to rush a bit to get our rental car back to San Francisco. Those were probably the most stressful moments. I didn't really want to jump in car and drive 4 hours without having a shower first but time constraints and other factors meant we settled for wet wipes. On the way out, we saw this amazing, apocalyptic swirling column of smoke. Let me reiterate: it was swirling! We drove right by an intense fire on the outskirts of the park. I heard later that they closed the road we used and the next day, smoke filled the valley and some of the outer campsites were shut down. We got out just in time.

What the picture doesn't show is that the pillar of smoke was swirling around like a tornado!!