The first order of business was to sleep in. I woke up right on schedule at 5:30 and tried to get back to sleep for a while to no avail. I finally gave up at 6:30 and crawled out of the tent. I slept pretty soundly I discovered when the others woke and asked if I had heard the screaming baby? Nope. Did I hear the rangers fire the fun to scare the bear? Nope. Pretty good sleep.
After a quick breakfast it was off to explore the areas of the valley not seen yesterday. The first was Curry Village where I found coffee and a great guest lounge complete with rocking chairs on the porch. After connecting to the spotty wifi connection (but the only one in the valley) I settled in to relax and catch up with the road journal. It had gotten a bit behind.
I wonder if I can find a sailboat with a porch and rocker
After a while we went back to our campsite to coordinate with Sarah's brother. We are all to hike to the top of half dome tomorrow and he and his girlfriend are going to hike up to the Little Yosemite Valley with all their gear to camp. None of that silliness for me on my day off. I'll hike up and meet them in the morning with a light day pack.
After that it was off to the Ahwannahee hotel to check out 1920's park grandeur. Turns out that folks liked it fancy back then and it is still fancy.
Those folks in the 1920's knew about location
Stone surrounded by stone
We spent time in a very nice lounge area inside and I did some reading. It was then time to head over to the wilderness office and see if we can get a clear picture of what Saturday's camping will be.
We passed the rescue team doing some drills.
We have the unfortunate situation that all the campgrounds close to Tioga pass are still closed. We plan to head out on Friday and climb a couple thousand feet to one of the last open campgrounds (all we could get was space in an RV spot). That leaves several thousand feet and quite a few miles for Saturday. We would like to stop just short of the pass and go over and down when rested on Sunday.
We've been getting conflicting information about our ability to show up on bicycles and camp anyway so we wanted to see if there is a backcountry camping option to keep us legit. The folks at the wilderness center were not super helpful. It sounds like we will just show up, feign ignorance, and "emergency bivy" on a durable surface. The rangers we have talked to have told us that this shouldn't present a problem but it would be nice to have some definitive info.
We caught a Ken Burn's film about Yosemite (I managed to stay awake this time) and checked the post office hours for mailing our boots out on Friday.
After that it was back to curry village for more wifi and relaxing. We met Randy for dinner. He and Sarah scratched their pizza itch while I had a bug salad from a salad bar I found.
Early to bed tonight. Tomorrow (against my better judgement) I am forgoing another rest day for a 20 mile hike to the top of Half Dome.
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