The Yosemite 7, Day Two

Woke up about 6 again. Was not cold over night. In fact, I was almost too warm. Almost, but not quite.

After breakfast, we decided on a plan. Chilnualna Falls, today, Yosemite Falls tomorrow and Ostrander Ski Hut on Sunday. I'm not sure that we'll really be able to do so much, and I'm not sure we can even get to the Ostrander trail, because the Glacier Pt. Road is closed.

Chilnualna Falls Trail is out C. F. Road through North (?) Wawona. It's a cute little town. Small enough to have only a volunteer fire department, but big enough, at the least, for an elementary school. The trail's pretty nice - 2100 foot gain over about 4 miles each way. Not too bad. There are actually two or three major waterfalls on Chilnualna Creek. Since it's still early and was very wet, there's water everywhere. We had to walk over a few creeks that all seemed to be there only because it is so wet.

Took a lot of pictures. I'm getting frustrated with the camera, though, because I am really having rouble getting it to focus where I want when I put it in macro mode. Will have to play with manual focus some more, but I find it's hard to tell whether I've focused well with such a small screen. I hope some of them come out. I'm up to about 150 pictures so far, and the camera battery's actually doing fine. I have another fully charged for when this one runs out.

Had a very interesting conversation with Chris and Dan. They were talking about their next several years... Chris, who's been writing since he was 7, wants to give himself 10 years to really see if he can make writing work. Dan, who has now taken the bar 4 times, obviously hopes he passed this time and can get on with actually working as a lawyer. I knew they were going to ask me about it... partly to avoid actually talking about my career itself, I preempted them and said that all I really want is for things to be easy for a while. It seems as if Dawn and I have been through a lot since we met, and it would just be nice if we could go for a couple/few years with nothing hard... no more deaths among family & close friends... a normal pregnancy resulting in a healthy baby... less strife & stress related to our jobs... A while later, Dan mentioned that he really understood what I was talking about, even down to the level of little stuff, such as the morons who can't be bothered to get their checkbooks out & start writing them until the checker tells them the total. Obviously not the level of hard I was talking about, but I think I need to try to chill out about that sort of stuff again; I never used to be bothered by things like that, but now they drive me absolutely crazy!

Played a bit of cribbage with Jim & Dan. Dan kicked my ass in one hand... first time he's managed that. Lunch was MREs on the trail. Dinner was steak ka-bobs courtesy of Jim with help from Chris. Quite tasty.

Just before dinner we found out that Dan passed the bar! This is a huge relief for all of us, and not as much more for Dan than the rest as you might think... The results were released online at 6 and he was able to get through to Karyn eventually. Funny that we were having that conversation earlier, although it's not surprising that we were talking about the bar at times...

I'm so tired that I'm actually going to be pretty early... it's only about 9 or so.