Hiking in the woods is freakin awesome!

The most exciting thing that happend to me on this trip was seeing a bear in the wild for the first time.
We hiked near the Merced River on day 3 of our Backpacking/half-dome/anniversary trip. I woke up with sore muscles from the Half-dome climb the day before. We decided to do a hike up towards Merced Lake instead of climbing to Clouds Rest. It was 8 miles? away and was such a beautiful hike. We thought it would be "easier"..there didn't seem to be too much elevation--but it ended up a 13 mile trip, 8 hours total! With only a brief rest. I'd say it was the prettiest hike. We were very alone, only passing a hand full of people in the whole 8 hours. When you hike from Little Yosemite to Merced Lake ...you realize why it's called Little Yosemite. One mile into the hike we were in a valley. Granite wall on the left, Granite wall on the Right and lots of green grass and wild flowers in the valley...just like Yosemite valley. There had been a fire here at some point because most of the trees were black with char.
Little Yosemite
The trail follows the Merced River. We came upon atleast 2-3 slides that reminded us of the slide before Vernal Falls.
slide This smooth granite was made by the glaciers. There are so many places you can see slide marks on the granite and very smooth spots. If anyone has the opportunity to visit Yosemite, there is a great 'history of the the glaciers' exibit that shows what the whole Yosemite area looked like before, durring and after the glaciers.

Anyways.. we hiked about an hour before we saw our little friend. The river was on our right. The granite wall of Moraine Dome was about 20 yards to the left. There is large and small boulders in between the granite wall and the trail. We went around a bend in the trail and up on a large boulder to our left was the cutest baby black bear! We did not stop to take pictures because we only saw baby and not Mom. We were talking loudly as we passed...so as to not startle any other bears that could be around. The baby was looking out at us as we passed by. I had the most exciting feeling. After we had walked past I just kept saying 'I can't believe we just saw a bear!' It was more exciting and less scary.
The bear wasn't there on the way back (it was hours later)..but we took a photo of the rock it had been on...imagine it's little body was black fur and it's snout was light brown.
bears rock
We hiked further up the river and had a snack overlooking the narrow-fast spot in the river. We ate cliff bars and had water.
our snack spot.
Everyday in the afternoon we heard thunder...today we went to it. The farther we hiked-the closer we got to dark clouds. It looked awesome! We could see Voglesang peak in the distance--it was dark with clouds.

vogelsang

We got to the first of two bridges and decided that, because of the time and weather, that this would be our lunch spot and then we'd turn around and head back. We pumped water with our filter and I had sandwiches ready. It was turning windy and before we finished eating...water dropplets were falling all around. Then it turned to a good amount of rain.
getting rained on

I was a little nervous about getting struck by lightening...so we hiked back at a good pace. My legs were more sore by now..and some of this was down hill. I had my hiking poles(which helped alot). We hiked out of the rain and back into the sun...and then back the way we came. We looked for the bear(s) but they were gone.
But...about 2 miles from camp we saw this big guy...



this time I had my camera ready. He was digging around some fallen trees--probably eating termites. He looked up at us and looked for a few seconds and then he turned his back to us and went on with what he was doing. He was pretty big.

A mile from camp we realized we had cell reception and called home to talk to my Mom and our kids. The kids seemed to be having a good time with Grandma.

Back at camp we pumped more water from the river and made dinner. We made chicken breast with mashed potato, the freeze-dried backpackers food. I'd heard mixed reviews of the chicken...but we really liked it. We had the freeze-dried green beans with dinner. They were very good also. Food tastes soooo good after a whole day of hiking.
dinner

The river near the campsite is a communal spot, as everyone has to pump water to drink and cook with. I ran into a lady that had passed us on the trail (right after seeing the baby bear--we told her where we'd seen it so she would be aware). She said that when she passed the spot...she saw 2 babies and the Mom!