Day 2 - Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Waking up in Yosemite without the responsibility of cooking breakfast over a tiny flame and miniature dishes similar to the tin ones you would see in a prison movie was quite a treat. The only drag was that our room didn’t have a bathroom, so we had to walk out to the cottage porch to use the public one if we needed to go. The Wawona is still way cozier than camping though.
After a leisurely morning, we packed up the car and headed to Yosemite Valley. We stopped at Bridalveil Falls and played around on some big rocks.
Next, we headed to Lower Yosemite Falls. We played around on some big rocks there, too.
Now I must pause for a moment and explain something for you. Throughout the months that we had been planning our trip, Brian PROMISED that we would not have to do any difficult hikes. Any time he and I have gone hiking together, it has resulted my near-certain demise…up and down Half Dome (in nearly half the time that it takes the average person), the “Four Mile Trail” (seriously almost killed me, my heart rate was up to 220), the Panorama Trail (which we did right after the Four Mile Trail, and were told it was 8 miles of downhill hiking; turns out it is mostly uphill hiking, go figure), and hiking into and out of the Grand Canyon with several days’ worth of food and supplies on our backs. The opposite of easy.
I like hiking, of course, but this is a celebration of our one-year anniversary of marriage. It is supposed to be a time to get away, relax, and re-energize. My one plea for this trip was that I didn’t want to come back from vacation needing another vacation to recover from my previous vacation. You know what I mean?
Okay, the stage is set.
So what does my loving husband suggest as soon as we have had our fun at Lower Yosemite Falls? We should hike the Mist Trail up to Vernal Falls. Come on, it would be so fun. And it’s a warm day, so the mist will feel good. Come on, just one hike, you know you want to. You’ve done that one before, it’s a super easy hike. You’ll be glad you did. It’ll be totally worth it.
I agreed, on the condition that, the next day, we could do whatever I picked to do.
Deal.
We took the shuttle over to the trail head. At the very beginning of our adventure, we spotted a baby bear. We could not spot mama bear, so we couldn’t really be sure that she wasn’t using her baby as a decoy to get us looking at the cute mass of brown fur so that she could lunge on us from behind like a velociraptor out of Jurassic Park. Thankfully, that was not the case, and the scariest thing we encountered was the Bear Encounters sign itself.
Unscathed, we continued upward. I will let you be the judge about whether it was “super easy” or not. I won’t say a thing. Not a single thing. And I definitely won’t mention that during our ascent, we passed a lady wearing a neck brace being carried down the mountain on a stretcher by five park rangers. 
Once we got to the top, however, I was reminded of why Yosemite, out of all the places that I have visited in the world so far, is still my favorite place to be.
After a somewhat grueling descent and a halfway magical meal at the Curry Village buffet, we decided to call it a day and hopped back on the shuttle that took us to our car. We arrived back at Moore Cottage well before dusk, and managed to muster a game of Yahtzee before I embarked on a night of 13 hours of sleep, which began at 7:30pm.
A much-needed vacation, indeed.
