A Long Ago Trip to Yosemite

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Long ago, when I was a teenager, I had the privilege of spending two weeks in Yosemite National Park with some friends of mine. No parents on the trip, we just did as we pleased. We started out in Tuolumne Meadows and decided to hike down the John Muir Trail to Little Yosemite Valley from there. Tuolumne Meadows is a beautiful, green sub-alpine meadow, the elevation is 8,775 feet. We soon found out that all the moisture it takes to keep the grass green is also great for mosquitoes. Each of us had our own private swarm buzzing around our heads. We spent two nights on the trail, once we started descending the terrain became drier and more rocky the mosquitoes eased off a bit. When we got to Little Yosemite Valley we met some other campers who warned us about the nightly bear visits. One person had their tent ripped to shreds by a bear when they left some granola bars in it. Each night we had to put all of our food into a duffel bag and hang it far off the ground and out on the end of as skinny a branch as possible. We spent three more nights in that valley. One day, in broad day-light, a mama bear and her cub came foraging around where we were camped. Even though there were probably a dozen campers out there beating pots with spoons and making a terrible racket, it took a while to convince the bears to leave. There are no roads to Little Yosemite Valley, so we had to continue hiking down to civilization in Yosemite Valley. We went down Mist Trail which follows the Merced River down Nevada Falls, Emerald Pool and Vernal Falls. It is a steep trail and the hiker is often enveloped in a rainbow from the mist produced by the waterfalls. I was glad that we got to experience that trail going down rather than climbing up.