Who knew riding in a bus would be my favorite part of the day. (Aug 8)

We said good morning to Erik and Blizzard and I, unfortunately, had to succumb for the first time to using an unflushable toilet... enough said. We rolled up our tent and said goodbye to our new friends and started out to the visitors center. It was a beautiful drive and we enjoyed seeing Half Dome and El Capitan as we made our way through the park. There were people stopping on almost every road we turned onto to try catch a glimpse and a picture of the bald face mountain walls.

The park was so busy that day that they had park rangers directing traffic in the parking lots. Once we got a parking spot we tried to find the Visitors Center. I say tried because the maps that they had up weren't very good. We saw a line to take the shuttle and then a sign that said that the Center was a 10 minute walk. We decided to walk but had trouble figuring out which way we were supposed to go. Eventually we had success and did our usual poking around the gift shop and buying postcards and our souvenir patch. They had a 20 minute video playing on Yosemite in a small theater that Nate and I intended to watch... but instead took a quick nap in the cool, dark, comfy chairs. We did however, learn a little in an exhibit at the Visitor Center. Fun Fact: Ansel Adams interest in photography sparked from a boyhood trip to Yosemite. This was more interesting to Nate as I had no idea who Ansel Adams was. You can tell who is the more cultured individual in our duo. ;) Our next act, inspired more by a fellow tourist and less by the creation, was venturing into the general store to buy a can of Pringles to add to our lunch out of the bear canister of crackers and granola bars.

Not the best picture, but you can see how big this tree is!

We meandered through the heat of the day before hopping on a shuttle bus to Mariposa Grove to see the giant sequoias. I was very happy because it meant twenty minutes of air conditioning. The bus driver announced over the loudspeaker some information about the Grove and different options for hiking trails. We decided to just walk the lower grove instead of both the lower and upper grove for the sake of time and it was really hot. On the lower grove trail there were quite a few neat things to see. The Bachelor and His Three graces was one. It was one really big tree with three not as big but still really big trees behind it. The Grizzly tree was the star of the show with it being the biggest and oldest tree in the forest. Some of the branches on the tree were 6-7 feet in diameter. The tunnel tree was also interesting. It had part of its trunk cut out so it literally was a tunnel. They even had a picture posted of an old fashioned car driving through the tree. We caught the bus back to the parking lot and headed out of the park. We were planning to drive through the night until our next stop: Las Vegas.