Yosemite 2010, Part II

We arrived in Yosemite in the evening, unpacked, and then had dinner before going to bed. Including our lunch at In 'n Out, we had 7 potty stops on the 4-hour trip (that's got to be some kind of record). After the boys were in bed and Amy was off washing clothes that had been thrown up on (it wouldn't be a Talbot trip without at least one car sick incident), a small bear wandered through our camp. It was about as tall as a medium-sized dog, but much rounder. I've been to Yellowstone probably a dozen times and to Yosemite 3 or 4 times, and this was the first time I'd ever seen a wild bear. It was quite a thrill. He wandered up to our food locker and gave it a sniff. I pointed my flashlight at him and banged on the table and he mozied on to the next hut. He seemed quite familiar with the drill.

The next morning we made an early start (about 10:30. hey, we have kids.) to go visit Yosemite Fall. Since I was here last, the park has started a shuttle service to reduce the amount of traffic. We waited at the bus stop for a few minutes before boarding a very crowded bus.

The buses go one-way around the valley floor and it turns out that traveling from our stop to Yosemite Fall requires going almost all the way around the valley. Due to the large number of people, it took us about half an hour to get to our stop. Later, we looked at the map and decided it would have only taken us 15 minutes to walk to the falls from our camp site.

After a few potty stops we made it to the lower falls.


Along the path there were borders made with basketball-sized boulders. Lucas insisted on stepping on every single one despite the occasional 3 foot drop off the side. On the way back we stopped to eat lunch and take another picture. (Despite the hat, we are not Dodgers fans. Go Padres!)


After we got back to our campsite, we saw a number of deer. This was a high point of the trip for the boys, who afterward repeatedly said, "I can't wait to tell my friends that I saw a real deer!"