Day 3: Yosemite Valley

We drove in to Yosemite Valley around 4 in the afternoon. The first site to greet us was absolutely stunning: A vista overlooking a valley with the approximately 3,500 foot El Capitan looming on the left, half-dome in the far right, and Bridaveil falls to the right of the valley. As the water fell over the cliff of the waterfall it created a huge rainbow, which the camera happened to capture!
The next stop was the falls that left us both speechless! I was so surprised we could hike right up to it! Aleksey and I came to the very tourist filled lookout for the falls and realized we could scramble on the rocks to get a closer look, and did we ever! We went so close to the waterfall (don’t worry – totally legal) that we became SOAKED by the falling water. This was magical! Here we are, standing 50 feet away from a waterfall, which is morphed into different shapes and takes on different run-off directions on the rock wall with every change in the wind, surrounded by rainbows, being rained upon by a misty shower of waterfall water!!
As if the 9 miles that day were not enough, we decided to go on a 2 mile hike to Mirror Lake. Mirror Lake is usually a very still lake that allows a person to see the reflections of gorgeous granite cliffs. When we arrived it was a large half dried puddle with rippling water. Aleksey doubled back to the still lower part of the lake and captured some really beautiful photographs.
Camping that night was very interesting. It was already late, around 9:30, and we were driving to a campsite we knew might have an open space for us to pitch a tent. I was driving and saw a campsite about 10 miles earlier and decided to try it out. We drove in and found a spot IMMEDIATLEY. We paid 15 dollars for a campsite, set up the tent, inflated the queens sized air mattress, put all our clothes and sleeping bags into the tent, stored our food in a bear locker, found out the campsite was reserved to someone else… wait… what? Yes, the campsite was already reserved, but in our hastiness we never thought to check for the paper. Not only did we miss the fact that the paper was sitting under a rock, but we didn’t notice the tent set up 10 feet from us on the same site.
Aleksey jumped into the car and drove away to look for an open site. I sat there on a bench in the dark looking at people laughing and playing cards near a fire thinking to myself “should I ask them if we could just share their site?” As I was devising plan after plan of how we can squeeze onto another groups site Aleksey drove up. He found a site!!! A site far away!! Our tent was already set up with everything in it. I turned to Aleksey disappointed that we had to take everything down, only to set it up a quarter mile away. Aleksey was definitely not on the same wavelength as I was. Within the next 5 minutes we were driving with a FULLY SET UP tent, inflated mattress and all, ON TOP of the Hyundai Accent with the only things holding it in place being the weight of the famed air mattress and one arm out of each window. Got the tent to the site safe and sound, put it on the ground where it was meant to be, grabbed some wine and went to bed. Good Night.