beer cans and dementia

The Yosemite Hiking trip was unbelievably beautiful and rewarding. The group experience was so much fun. It was tough, though. 30 miles in 3 days, 7000 feet down into Tuolumne River Canyon and slowly back up again. So it was serious backpacking, climbing and walking - 6 hours a day average. But the nature we were able to see was - I can't put this in words, it was too huge and too beautiful. We started into this adventure in a group of eight. Thanks to Erin, the "general", everything was so well organized, that we didn't have to worry about anything. She also saved us from starving with trail mix during the breaks. Most of us did not know the others before the trip. At the end we got out of the canyon as good friends, laughing at our insider jokes that came up over and over again. Somebody was "demented" every ten minutes because he had done something less thoughtful. Just because the lady in the small shop near the entrance to Yosemite park told us horror stories of bears having eaten goats nearby recently and of an old lady she had met and who was later found dead under a manzanita bush because she had gotten lost hiking off on her own. Well, the lady was very old, but she had hiked for her whole life... We faced the danger of getting demented like her and "staying behind under manzanita bushes". Thank god nothing ever happened to us, we never even saw a bear on the hike. We did see one though, on the last morning, crawling out our tents on the backpacker's campsite after a really cold and uncomfy last night. The bear was small and blonde (!), not the bear I'd have liked to spot.. but - a bear. We have seen a bear. Obviously we had been extra cautious throughout the journey, storing every crumb of leftovers and all the deodorants and toothbrushes in the so called bear cans. I accidentally referred to them as beer cans several times, which always prompted the excited question "WHERE?!! I want some!"

One hour into the hike on the first day we discovered that we had forgotten two of the most important things: the wilderness permits that we had bought to be able to be out there and the sun screen that was supposed to be group shared. I sponged off some other hikers or park rangers we met for some so I was ok with my sun allergy. I got pretty tanned without sun screen on arms and legs. I wasn't as bad off as Aroon who forgot to bring underwear... :-) But even that was ok, he cleaned the boxers every day in the river anyway, because he had also forgotten to bring a swim suit!
The second day we had so much fun at the natural water slides and the gorgious green water pools in the river that we got on the trail too late and had to climb a mountain top in the heat of the day. Not so funny.
On the last day we reached several water falls, each one even higher than the others and met some mules on the way up - incredible how these animals walk those rocky, steep paths. Our meals were 'menues', designed by our experienced hiker John and consisting of al lot of dried food like dehidrated veggies, egg powder, milk powder, pan cake powder and noodles. We cooked the powders up with pumped water from the river. The dessert was never missing and always delicious. Sometimes it was little, the food, so that we jumped at ice-cream, chips and beer as soon as we got out the canyon and to the valley store. We were dirty after three days without a shower, but highly satisfied with our achievement and the many precious experiences and good times we had round the camp fire.

I came to SF the day before we left. Because Aroon had taken the day off work we were able to spend some hours downtown SF together. We went to the Golden Gate Park and visited the tea gardens. We took a serious of symmetry pictures. Just because. I think we got the idea because we were dressed the same. Here are two of these: