Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Yosemite 7, Day One

Woke up at about 6. Well... really, John woke up then, and Jim at the same time in response to John's stirring. I'd been awake at least half an hour or so. Was waiting for the pressure on my bladder to outweigh the expectation of cold clothes. I wasn't cold overnight under their blanket and our comforter. This bodes well, I think, for the actual camping... I was somewhat cold last year, so this time I've brought not only my air mattress and sleeping bag, but two comforters. I don't want to be cold on this trip.

Took quick trips to the restroom, then loaded our stuff and went down to the Bug cafe. Breakfast was OK. Dan joined us pretty quickly and we ate & talked while waiting for Dave & DSR. We decided not to get the travel lunches, though we did see that the cookies & trail mix they include are the same things we brought from Costco.

Drove to Oakhurst. This meant doubling back on 140 to Mariposa, then down 49. We did this partially to avoid any chance of the Valley still being closed because of flooding and partially so we could pick up a few things. So, we stopped at a Vons and a Long's to get ice, bug juice, batteries, and lunches. Dan conceded that I was right and he was wrong, publicly to DSR, who announced it to me over our radios. This with respect to turning left on 41 to get up to Yosemite... not sure why he thought we'd turn right...

I think we were at the Wawona Campground around 11:30am. They didn't give us 3 sites together, but 28 and 29 are decent. We're close to the front which makes it wasy to walk to the payphone, though probably a relative lot of traffic. We are, though, closer to the river and actually have a view of it from our site, which we didn't really last year.

After a couple of hours of setup and lunch, we walked out to the other end of camp. Dave, Dan, DSR & John played frisbee golf along the way. I wanted to go down to the end to take pictures of a log that I took a picture of last year. I can't remember exactly what the picture looked like, so I took several, including walking out to the other end of it in the water and taking some back toward shore, just because it seemed as if it might be cool.

Saw a garter snake and took a couple pictures of it. Won't really know how they came out until I get them on the computer next week. When we got back to camp, I put them all onto the iPod... took about 7-8 minutes to move 70 images and erase them from the card. Used up about half of the iPod's battery, so I'll need to make sure to recharge it whenever I can. Not sure how I'll know when the batteries on the reader will go, though I seem to remember that there's a light on it. It was hard to see...

We had drinks and snacks and chatted or read for a while. Chris didn't show up until about 6. Seems it was snowing at the pass on 80. Took him something like 7 hours to get through because there were even areas of 80 where they were doing repaving too boot! We set up Tent Mahal right away to make sure we didn't wind up doing it in the dark. I've decided to try having one comforter under the air mattress and the other on top of it but under the sleeping bag; that way I can wrap the top comforter around me if I need to. I'm also going to make a point of changing before bed to make sure my clothes are dry.

Dinner was pesto past and green beans with optional chicked & parm. Dan's idea of prepping advance definitely made a difference. As havce the two tripods we picked up for the propane lanterns. Chris and I caught up quite a bit while doing cleanup.

There's a contentiously raging game of Samurai Swords going on, but it's 11:30 and I'm tired, so I'm going to take some more cough stuff and go to bed. The cough hasn't been bothering me too much, but I have to make sure it stays under control.

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