Day 11 - June 18^th 2000

Today we were off to one of my reasons for coming back, to see the great waterfalls of Yosemite National Park. Both times I have been there before there was no water. The most beautiful place I have seen in my travels. So we cruised up and down mountains. We stopped at this little place in the middle of nowhere to do some shopping. Then we drove past Mono lake and turned the corner. We stopped at a little service station that had a trapeze for hire. Not one of us had the guts to try it out.

Then back in the van and we drove up Tioga Pass (Elev 10000ft) and into Yosemite. There was a fair bit more snow than when I was here last time, but a lot less colour. We decided to stop at the beautiful Tenaya Lake for lunch. As usual the picture does not do any justice to the scenery. Then we drove down towards the valley, past Tuolumne Meadows and down to Tuolumne Grove. We walked down the mile track to see the tall sequoia trees and walked through the holy tree. Then as we were walking back up, the slower hikers of the group (which I was normally a member) heard a disturbance in the woods. The first thing that goes through your mind is BEAR, but it was a cute little Bambi looking deer. So by the time we got back to the top we decided to move on.We drove through a few tunnels on our way (always remembering to put our hands on the roof, as this brought us good weather). As it was getting late the call was made to go and see Bridalvail falls. We pulled up and could see the falls from the carpark.

It was a short walk to the veiwpoint. The falls were absolutely breathtaking, the water seemed to dance with the wind side from side. Then we hooked it to our campground. Well it was an interesting campground, one mens shower, one womens and two unisex. So 3 showers available for 3 to 4 trek groups worth of people. So after dinner we went over to another group doing the Westerner 2. Well we drunk and some of us got drunk. We even tipped over their table. Including someone who ensured us that we had a full moon from the top of the van. We had to make sure that we did not touch the trees either.