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Granite….It’s not just a countertop.

We arrived in Yosemite National Park on Tuesday afternoon after a quick drive from San Francisco. I was so anxious and excited I could hardly stand how long it actually took to get to the park entrance. Once we arrived at the gates of the park, we proudly showed our official National Park season pass to the Park Ranger, and took the map of the park as if we were kids just let loose in an adult version of Disneyland. We put the top down in the Miata and took out for our first scenic tour of the day.

We first stopped at Bridalveil Fall, continued on to see El Capitan, and then made our way around to Glacier Point. Each of these points offers something unique, but the views of Half Dome, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, and all the other peaks from Glacier Point were just spectacular. When we were there it was at sunset and we noticed either a climber or hiker at the top of Half Dome. Hope that person had a plan for the night, because that is the last place I would want to be at in the dark. (Half Dome’s elevation is 8,836 ft…scary!)

We made our way back to Sonora, CA around midnight where we decided to stay. We rested up for what would be the next big “hike” of this entire trip. Wednesday morning came around, we got up early and headed to the park again. Matt made the suggestion that our National Park Season Pass should be more like a passport, so that each time you visit one of the parks, you get a fun stamp or sticker. I suggested Matt write in to the National Park Service and voice his interest in designing such a season pass, but at that point his interest in the idea soon faded.

Today was the day we were hiking to the top of Vernal Fall (Elevation 5,044 ft). As we can all reflect back on my recent hiking experience in the Grand Canyon, most people can predict how the outcome of this mission might be. So, we took off down the John Muir Mist Trail which leads you to the footbridge of Vernal Fall. Here there are gorgeous views of the fall, and when you look up and see people at the top you think that seems so far away. And guess what, it is! 1.8 miles sounds so easy, right? I can walk 1.8 miles in less than half an hour. Wrong. 1.8 miles one way seems like an eternity when it’s all uphill, your legs and feet are burning, and you feel like you might just pass out because it gets harder to breathe the higher you go up. At this point you have to make one of two commitments. 1. Either turn around there and go back, missing out on the exciting destination at the top, or 2. you push forward and take the last .03 miles up 700 extremely steep stairs to get to the point where the fall begins. This fall is the exact location where three hikers died earlier this year. One has been recovered, the other two still missing somewhere down below.

So, as Matt would say we are now “Committed” hikers, opposed to just “Amateur” hikers since we took on the challenge and made our way to the top. I suppose going from doing nothing to a hike in the Grand Canyon and one at Vernal Fall, is like going from 0 to 100 in 2.5 seconds. I guess in Matt’s world there is some type of hierarchy of hikers and we have at least made it one step up from the “I think I‘ll just sit on the couch and watch TV” level. Way to go us! It took us 4 hours roundtrip to be exact, about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get up it, 30-45 minutes messing around at the top, and then the rest of the time coming down. I have attached a video from the top of Vernal Fall just for you. That way you can sit in the comfort of your own home, eating junk food, watching reality TV, while getting a glimpse from the top without having to experience the extreme sweating and body aches that occur. You can thank me later. I have to say as much as I hated the “hurt so good” pain on the way up, I have decided I like going up better than coming down. I now understand why people train on a Stairmaster with weighted packs for things like this.

After we completed the hike, we made our way around to Tuolumne Meadows. I must say I love this portion of the park far more than anywhere else in Yosemite Valley. I feel like this area is not so commercialized and therefore what I expected a national park to be like. This area offers such a variety of beautiful scenery. Trees, wildlife, lakes, streams, meadows, mountains, etc. There was still snow on the top of some of the peaks. I do have to say it is much colder in this area. We followed this area all the way out of the park ending on the east side in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Yosemite is an amazing place and has been one of the best parts of this trip. Matt is already looking at dates for next year, so that we can come back and maybe move up one more level in this hierarchy of hikers. I think I am starting to like this hiking thing. I hope it’s not just because of the national park giddiness I currently have. I guess we’ll see when we make it back to Oklahoma. For now, I left Yosemite with a different appreciation for granite none the less. This place makes the granite countertops I picked out look “amateur“. I will be coming back here again soon, real soon.

Matt and I decided to drive on about two hours towards Salt Lake City before we stopped for the night in Tonopah, Nevada. I am not sure who would decide to live here or “put roots down” in such an awful place. The only way I can describe this place is like one of those frontier-themed portions of Frontier City, but in real life, and not in the cute, charming “this place is kind of quaint” sort of way. I would have really appreciated the lady who took my reservation at the hotel to inform me about the fact that you will literally be driving from Yosemite in the desert, in the dark, alone (no seriously, this truly defines the middle of nowhere), without a single gas station along the way. Yes folks, that’s right, not even a single gas station for 206 miles. Thankfully, the Miata was being awesome because we coasted into this ghost town on fumes. I think I am going to suggest that the hotel start offering this information as a complimentary service to those traveling to their area. And to top it off, you don’t get cell phone service either, so calling AAA would have not been an option either. So…. under the condition we had ran out of gas (I was pretty sure we were going to, but don’t tell Matt I was questioning his level of gas expertise) I would have had to hitch a ride from the only souls occasionally on the road with us, truck drivers. I think truck drivers are great people, really, they provide a great service to us here in America, but safety police here is not really into getting into big trucks with men, at night, in the middle of the desert, whether or not Matt is with me. Not gonna happen. Never the less, we got there and stayed the night. We headed out towards Salt Lake City first thing this morning.

We stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah so that Matt could catch a glimpse of the Lands Speed Record worldly car event. The place is salty for sure. It looked like everywhere was covered in snow. We came on into Salt Lake City tonight and have really enjoyed this place. It is a clean city, smells nice, full of activities, and as Becky reminded me a place where plural marriage still exists. Bring on the Big Love! Sorry to keep all of you hanging the past few days, we have just been getting in really late each night because we are out trying to see and do everything. Our journey continues next into Colorado Springs. We will spend two days there before heading back to the motherland. Hope you all are getting inspired to be more adventurous, try out new things, and challenge yourself as I hoped that if people could see that I can do it, you could do it as well.