Day 61: A Short Visit to Yosemite

Luxy and Voyager walk ahead to get a hit hitch, and Rafiki and I are right behind them. We stand outside for two hours trying to grab a hitch. It’s cold and I’ve put on all my rain gear.

We heard it was an easy hitch from here to Yosemite!

Apparently not.

We do have one guy stop for us in a big truck.

“Are you going to Yosemite?” we ask.

“I’m going to Crane Flats,” he says.

Perfect! That’s where we need to go.

The three of us girls are talking to him. Rafiki walks up next to us.

“Can we hitch a ride with you?” we ask.

The driver looks back into his empty car. “I’m all full here,” he says.

“Why did he even stop? His truck was empty!” Luxy and Voyager say.

“Maybe he was just checking to see if we’re alright?” I suggest. “I don’t know. That was really weird. Maybe he saw Rafiki and only wanted the girls.”

Weird. No luck hitching for us.

Our backup plan is the bus, so we grab coffees and wait at the bus stop. We are told that it sometimes picks up at the store, sometimes at the bus stop.

Well, I’m anxious and the girls and I spend a few minutes trying to hitch.

Rafiki is unbothered about the late bus and chatting with the couple at the bus stop.

The bus finally arrives. I skid on the gravel as I race to my pack, throw it over my shoulder, then run to the bus stop. We drop our packs in the storage under the bus and board.

It’s a beautiful ride to Yosemite. Even though the bus was half an hour late, we gaze at the giant rock structures. We pause at some construction and hang out here a while.

Yosemite is going to be a short trip.

When we do arrive, it’s full of people. The food options are a deli or a burger place. I opt for the burger place. We eat standard park burgers then resupply. I go for a bunch of Mac n cheese.

Luxy splits from the group to shower. Rafiki, Voyager and I take a stroll to the lower falls. The waterfall is high in the sky as we approach.

Another smaller waterfall is just ahead of us. There’s a lot of people, so we move on to the lake. We take a quick dip then hike on.

I really wanted a pizza, but it requires a shuttle and we can’t walk there.

I try to call Luxy to get us a pizza. The service is bad. It’s too late for us to get on the shuttle but maybe she can get us one.

If she texts me back.

We’re walking when she calls. The connection is bad. She asked what I wanted but I get a text that reads:

Too late.

No! I can’t pack out the pizza? Aw man! This is horrible!

As we continue walking the path, I get another text from Luxy.

I got you and Rafiki a pepperoni pizza to share. If you don’t want it I’ll pack it out.

Thank you Luxy! She saves the day!

She asks us to get some ziplock bags because they didn’t have any boxes.

Rafiki and I go into an art gallery. Rafiki is really good at photography, so he quite enjoys the photos. I prefer them to the paintings, surprisingly. I’m getting more exposed to photography as art, I think.

The photos are of amazing sunrises and sunsets, waterfalls, beautiful trees, bears. Some are in black and white and some in color.

We meet at the bus station. Rafiki was charged with getting ziplocks, but didn’t want to spend twelve dollars on a box of ziplocks so he got some free paper bags instead.

Luxy is a bit flustered as I explain this to her. She had to bus all the way over here with two pizzas in bags! The restaurants ran out of boxes! And she had to throw away her Nutella because she had no room to carry it all.

On the benches outside, we manager to use my old and gently used big ziplocks to store the pizza and hide it in the paper bags Rafiki got.

We board the bus and eat the pizza. It is delicious! Aw man it’s so good! Cheesy and salty and pepperoni-y! Amazing! It’s saucey and bready and I wish I had another one!

I look at half dome and the elephant structure as we ride back to Toulumne. I doze off a few times as I go.

When we arrive, I eat some tasty potato wedges. We hang out here for a bit before walking to the hiker campground. We only have to pay a few dollars to camp.