You only Yurt the Ones You Love

The next day we headed back into Yosemite. The sign for services/stores which had previously said “services open on Friday” now sported a penciled-in “at 5pm” which we both found a bit disappointing. We ate some breakfast from cellophane containers and headed for the Mist Trail. Getting off to bus we were treated to a couple of deer doing that dear thing that only deer can do. I snapped some photos and then we started up the trail proper. The trail was lovely. I was told the trail was lovely. I could not see beyond the stinging sweat pouring into my eyes and all I could hear was the threat that the explosion of my heart might overcome the thunderous rasping of my lungs. Since this was wintertime, the Mist Trail itself was closed (that is the inside bit of the trail that runs up next to Vernal Falls), so we were forced to take the Muir Trail loop instead. It is considerably longer and much less scenic if you are interested in hiking waterfall trails in order to see, well, waterfalls. We trod mightily to Clarke Point at which case the BAG’s hip was tightening up and I was in complete systemic failure. We took a couple of photos with Nevada Falls in the background, a few little nature shots (the bluejay, for instance), and then headed down the hill. All the way we were either right in front of or right behind a single-mother with a hideous little gang of children who insisted on throwing frozen snow at each other, and when that wasn’t available resorting to sticks or dirt. I almost nobly offered, to the harried harridan, beating the little shits soundly for their misbehavior, but decided it was her cross to bear. At each turn of a switchback, Yvonne looked up to the sky and cursed whatever vapor trails she saw.

Eventually we made it back to the bottom of the hill a process which, surprisingly, involved a minimum of falling.

Despite how painful it had been, this entire ordeal had only consumed 2 hours or so of the day. By the time we were done, of course, we were too weak to do anything but screw around in Yosemite Village and hang out in the meadow and take 8-million shots (SmartCard in camera!) of a Red Robin, which was the only the second animal (see bluejay above) stupid enough to get within three miles of me the entire vacation. Well, at least when I had a camera and there was a card in it.

Eventually, wounded badly, we headed out on 120 to the fabled Yurt-Hut. About as soon as we left the park boundaries (with the odometer set to 0 again, so I could get a 5-mile notification) the BAG and I both began to have a squirmy belief. She was sitting in her seat kind of twitchy and so was I. As we began to round familiar corners, I believe it was the BAG who first said, “you know, this is going to turn out the be….” And then we saw it. Yosemite Lakes was the very same store, gas-station, and Inn that we had stopped at two days previously. We had been unable to find it DESPITE HAVING BEEN THERE less than 48 hours earlier. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. The store, of course, was closed, so after driving down to check in, we had to roll to Groveland to get some vittles for fixing.

The good news was that the Yurt was nice, very big, and on a sort of scenic rise. The bad news was that the folks in the yurt next to us were a bit loud – we heard their TV blaring as we came in. We ate dinner, watched a bit of TV (the yurts had TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, full bathrooms, and skylights – not your Mongolian father’s yurt).

We went to sleep at exactly the time the folks next to us, well, a woman anyway, went mad with either her lover or her vibrator. The young woman had an astounding line in profanity. I, still unused to having a hand-held recorder, was a bit tardy in remembering that it was in my computer bag, but eventually I did and recorded one of her lesser outbursts here (mp3 (smallish) or aif (largish)).

BAG watched the full moon through the sun-roof and we eventually drifted off agreeing there was no way I was making it back into the valley in time for my photo-walk. It had been doomed from the start, and now it was official. Opening the 6th Heineken was merely the christening of the event. The lovely fireplace/heater was also complicit and the BAG had her evil role as well. All in all, a pretty good day.