Monday, September 10, 2012

Check out our new blog

We've moved to CA, hence the new blog - check out our adventures!

http://adventuresomescientists.blogspot.com/

Monday, January 30, 2012

The Honeymoon

 We spent one day in the Mariposa grove of Giant Sequoias. Wow! What an amazing place!
 That tree behind us is still alive!
 Just to get an idea of scale! These trees have to be some of the biggest things on earth!
 Want to know how weird we are? We decided that mountain water was way better than tap water, so we hit up the river in Yosemite to fill up our gallon jugs. Every day. Yeah, we're a little crazy. But the water was out of this world! I swear I would drink water all the time if it tasted that good!
 Here we are pumping water through our little water filter.
 Lower Yosemite Falls
Yosemite Falls (I know you can't see it, but it's there!)
 We had some pretty nasty weather while we were in the Valley. It was foggy and rainy and just plain cold, wet and miserable. Thankfully, Alex has forced me to be outfitted for weather of all sorts, so we came prepared with rain pants and jackets, and I was actually pleasantly comfortable for most of the trip! The giant, warm socks he bought me also helped a lot too!
 The Ahwanee Hotel!
 This picture is worth a thousand words. One night, we headed out of Yosemite for the 45 mile drive back to our cabin in Wawona. The road is two lane, mountain pass that goes up to about 6500 feet before descending back to Wawona (which is about 4000 feet). As we were leaving the Valley, it was raining, lightly at first, but then it rained more and more. Rain turned into ice. Ice turned into snow! Pretty soon, we were driving through a real snowstorm in my Dad's little Chevy Aveo. Thankfully, Alex knows how to drive in the snow, but our little car started slipping. We came upon a few cars that were stuck in the road, and we stopped. Alex tried to help them, but the snow was accumulating too fast to do anything but get back into our car. Alex made the executive decision to drive back into the valley for the night, as we hadn't even reached the top of the mountain pass. We got back into the Valley, and luckily found a place to stay at the Yosemite Lodge. We got some dinner at the Lodge and literally collapsed into bed. What a harrowing adventure!
 This is the view from the Yosemite Lodge of Yosemite Falls. How pretty!
 The rest of our days at Yosemite were pretty gorgeous. This was the day after the storm, can you see the snow on the granite?
 Bridalveil Falls!
 Hiking!
 I made Alex stop the car to take in this beautiful sunset!
 We hiked the Four Mile trail up to Glacier Point. The rising sun just made Yosemite Falls look amazing.
 The view from Glacier Point
 Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point
 We made it to Glacier Point!
 Four Mile trail goes up that! Can you believe it?
 Alex making a fire in the firepit at our little cabin.
 The cabin we stayed in was super adorable. The stove was pretty old - we even had to light the burners! We cooked most every night on this great old stove, which was really fun!

 The inside of the little cabin.
Out rustic little abode for the week!

Altogether, we really had a fantastic stay in Yosemite. The weather put a damper on our plans to go backpacking for a few days, as our destination (Tuolomne Meadows) received over 2 feet of snow during the storm we witnessed. As we were prepared for cold weather camping, butnot for snow camping, we scrapped the idea and decided to just hang out. Our trip up the four mile trail later than week proved to us that we had made the right decision. We came upon hard packed snow and ice all along the granite trail (which had been carved out of granite cliffs). I was convinced that Alex was trying to kill me, as I don't do well with heights, or ice and snow for that matter. We made it to the top of Glacier Point, but I had no desire to hike back down. Our trip was wonderful, and a great way to unwind after all the craziness of the wedding. It was with a great deal of sadness that we packed up and headed back to reality. Why are vacations always so short, but work days seem so long :)