Mariposa and Yosemite

Wanda strikes again!! On our way from Porterville to Mariposa, CA, instead of the interstate, we found ourselves on a winding back road through the hills of Mariposa, both dirt and badly paved. We had been invited to a house rented by friends from England whom we met on our past cruise. They had their son and his girlfriend with them, and it was their son's birthday, which led to a scavenger hunt from market to market in the surrounding towns, which were at least 15-20 miles apart.

After finally finding the main town and a cake we followed some back roads to find the place we would stay. The house turned out to be gorgeous with a great patio and an even better view. However, it was a different story, once inside. The house was rented out by a family who had obviously not had the time to take down their christmas decorations for the past 10 years, for the house was still fully decorated, complete with festive spiderwebs. Along with the silver garland, there were pictures in every room of their family that seemed to go back to the 70s. These pictures would have been fine, if it was not for the fact that they are one of the creepiest families around. Soon, we found that every drawer in the house was full of the family's clothing, the hot tub did not work, there was really no internet service and 'central air' just meant open all bedroom doors and put all the window ACs on high. Despite the disturbing stay, we were only a half hour from the enterence to Yosemite.

Yosemite National Park was truly amazing with great views. Unfortunately, most of the park's waterfalls are dried up by August, which is the time we arrived, but there was still plenty to see. As soon as we got into the park, we headed to Glacier Point, one of the most popular lookout points. The drive was to take about an hour to reach the point, but of course we hit construction, so it took us 2.5 hours to get there. The view point looked out over the domes which the park is known for, and this picture, which is the half dome. Half of this rock came off in a landslide years ago. They told us that if we zoom in on our pictures we will see the crazy people that hike up the side of it and camp at the top.

While exploring the rest of the views and walks throughout the park, Marc came across his future profession. We saw a female park ranger walking amongst a crowd of tourists, carrying a paintball gun. She was casually telling the people how she had just shot a bear with her paitball gun. Apparently, her job is to deter bears from the road ways and hiking paths by shooting them with clear paintballs.

We spent our second day in the Mariposa River. This river runs along the road that brings you from Mariposa to Yosemite. We drove along the road until we found some suitable rocks we could sit on along the river and we climbed down the cliff with Cohen to the water. The river was too fast to put in floats, but the sun was hot and the water was warm, so we sun bathed, waded and swam and picniced on the river for the day.