Driving for Hiking

We woke up late, catching up on some much needed sleep. But what to do today? We had a third day on our Disneyland tickets - or we could skip it and do something else. By now, Duane and I were "done" with theme parks and we elected to do something quieter and more low key. But what?

Duane wound up suggesting that we go drive up to Yosemite and hike the first part of the Half Dome trail tomorrow morning. I thought that was a great idea, but we didn't have any of our gear. All we had were tennis shoes and regular socks. Duane had a knapsack and I had a fanny pack - no hydration packs. And then there was our son, who would have to come with us if we did this.

Not to be daunted by these challenges, we decided to stay in Oakhurst overnight, and drive into Yosemite Valley the next morning. We would look on the National Park Service website at the hotel and determine whether this was feasible with the gear that we had. If not, we'd just take another beautiful walk around the valley floor, ooing and ahing at all of the plentiful and lovely springtime waterfalls.

We checked out of our motel and off we went, back up I-5, but this time veering onto Highway 99 North after the Grapevine. Since we were getting low on clean clothes, we decided to stop in Visalia and find a wash 'n' fold where our laundry could be done while we went shopping to pick up a few items that we might use on tomorrow's hike. We needed electrolyte, granola bars, trail mix and bottled water.

Roger, our GPS, to the rescue! I hit the menu for "Points of Interest" got a list of laundry services and called the number listed to find out if they had wash and fold service. It took us two tries! And after we located it, Roger took us to its front door. Way to go! Roger is awesome!

While our laundry was being done, we went shopping at Target, picking up granola bars, G2, and water. As it turned out, there was a Sport Chalet store in the same mall, so we picked up some sports beans and found a one liter hydration fanny pack for our son. Perfect! And even if we didn't go on this hike, Duane or I might use it for other shorter hikes. Duane also found a nice hiking hat to cover his neck and ears and help prevent sunburn.

While there, I also looked for headlamps. When we start the Half Dome hike, we'll be going up the Mist trail in the dark around 4:00 am. I've been looking for headlamps at REI, but they are all big and clunky if they have lots of LEDs/lumens, and none of them attach other than by an elastic strap. Having tried this before over a hard hat for my volunteering activities with the American Red Cross, I was dubious that this was a good solution. I really don't want the headlamp to keep slipping off while I'm hiking. Ugh. And the less weight I carry in my pack, the better off I'm going to be. Unfortunately, Sport Chalet had a very similar selection of headlamps, so I had no success this afternoon.

We still had some time to kill before our laundry was done, so we bought tickets to see Monsters vs. Aliens, which our son enjoyed very much. (I'm afraid I can't say the same. The plot was thin, the writing was mediocre, and the movie contained far too much feminist garbage about how men are jerks and women can be "super heroes" without them. The writers should meet my husband Duane!)

Afterwards, we collected our laundry and got back on the road to Oakhurst once again. We arrived at our hotel, the Best Western, around 9:00 pm and checked in. We had a very quick dinner at Round Table, and then headed back to the hotel for a good night's sleep. We looked at the NPS website for Yosemite, specifically the first part of the Half Dome trail, and determined that we could probably do at least the first part up to Vernal Falls and back, about 3 miles round trip and 1000 feet elevation change - depending of course on how our son managed. We would have to wait until tomorrow to find out.