We woke up a little stiff, I guess, after a night in the tent. I had slept rather lightly and the campground was fairly noisy. There's all the people that are packed into it, but there's also the blue jays and the squirrels. And the yellowjackets! All trying to grab a bite of our food. I had a few mosquito bites already from the night before, most in my face. By the way, I could have sworn I heard a bear during the night; there was a slamming on the door to some food locker out there and I then heard a big grunt of dissatisfaction. Seriously, it wasn't a German!
C had been thinking about a couple of hikes: one was to be up the cliffs just above the campground, over Yosemite falls, the other hike he was anticipating was a hike around and up Half Dome. The ruled out the latter one, as it was estimated to take about 12 hours, and we certainly hadn't gotten up early enough to do that. After pondering on the other one we were finally too lazy to do that either, instead we jumped on the park shuttle and had it take us out to the trail for Mirror Lake. We hiked around there for a good half day, had impressive views of Half Dome, ate our lunch pack, walked along the river and in to a side valley until we came to the wilderness area, from where we weren't allowed to proceed further without permits. On the way I just about stepped on a rattlesnake. It lying in the middle of the trail, and I just noticed it before I put my foot on it. At the same moment it caught C's eye, and he basically jumped on me and pushed me off the trail in panic. The snake shot across the path and hid under a tree trunc. It was small and didn't look very frightening, but C said it was a baby rattlesnake and that they were all the more dangerous because more aggressive. He was in shock more than me. "One step and our trip would have been over!", he said.
We rather took it easy as we walked back. We circled the valley, walked past the Ahwahnee hotel and shed some looks inside (who knows, maybe we'll decide to spend Xmas there in a couple of years) and stopped at the village store (for the things that we had forgot to bring: can opener, cork screw, matches ...!?!) With the intent to get an early start the day after we prepared our barbecued lamb chops just after we got back, thus managed to have dinner before dark this time.
We woke up a little stiff, I guess, after a night in the tent. I had slept rather lightly and the campground was fairly noisy. There's all the people that are packed into it, but there's also the blue jays and the squirrels. And the yellowjackets! All trying to grab a bite of our food. I had a few mosquito bites already from the night before, most in my face. By the way, I could have sworn I heard a bear during the night; there was a slamming on the door to some food locker out there and I then heard a big grunt of dissatisfaction. Seriously, it wasn't a German! 
C had been thinking about a couple of hikes: one was to be up the cliffs just above the campground, over Yosemite falls, the other hike he was anticipating was a hike around and up Half Dome. The ruled out the latter one, as it was estimated to take about 12 hours, and we certainly hadn't gotten up early enough to do that. After pondering on the other one we were finally too lazy to do that either, instead we jumped on the park shuttle and had it take us out to the trail for Mirror Lake. We hiked around there for a good half day, had impressive views of Half Dome, ate our lunch pack, walked along the river and in to a side valley until we came to the wilderness area, from where we weren't allowed to proceed further without permits. On the way I just about stepped on a rattlesnake. It lying in the middle of the trail, and I just noticed it before I put my foot on it. At the same moment it caught C's eye, and he basically jumped on me and pushed me off the trail in panic. The snake shot across the path and hid under a tree trunc. It was small and didn't look very frightening, but C said it was a baby rattlesnake and that they were all the more dangerous because more aggressive. He was in shock more than me. "One step and our trip would have been over!", he said.
We rather took it easy as we walked back. We circled the valley, walked past the Ahwahnee hotel and shed some looks inside (who knows, maybe we'll decide to spend Xmas there in a couple of years) and stopped at the village store (for the things that we had forgot to bring: can opener, cork screw, matches ...!?!) With the intent to get an early start the day after we prepared our barbecued lamb chops just after we got back, thus managed to have dinner before dark this time.
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