Yosemite Day 2

Our second night in the park, we woke up to snow. But it melted fast and with rain boots and jackets and lots of other layers we stayed warm and dry.

We fortuitously ran into our friends who were staying elsewhere in the valley on the shuttle so we decided to hike to Mirror Lake with them. It was fun watching the kids romp together. Alec did awesome hiking the mile in and we enjoyed a little rest at the meadows around the "lake" before hiking back to the shuttle. Right before heading back the clouds cleared a little bit and we could see Half Dome. Charlie wanted to take a turn hiking so we let him and he did AMAZING! He kept saying, "oh! anuder ticky part!" whenever we'd get to the "tricky" parts where we made him hold our hands to walk up rocks or puddles or roots or something else slippery. It was really fun.


We ate a picnic lunch around the Visitor's Center and then took the shuttle to hike to Vernal Falls. This was way steeper than we realized and the .8 mile there was hard, but with promises of treats at the bridge (where we stopped to turn back) we were able to keep Alec (and ourselves!) going. Chris was pretty nervous about the steep drop off the cliffs right off the side of the trail, but it was such a beautiful hike. My favorite one we did.

Here is a poor attempt at stitching together a panorama of the view along the hike.