Before flying out to Indonesia we had a couple of days in San Francisco that we weren't really sure what to do with. Antoine, a friend of JC told us about Yosemite National Park, only a couple of hours away, that was supposed to be very beautiful and that we should go if we could. Said and done, we took a bus, a train and a bus again and ended up in a fantastic little valley set between sharp mountain walls, waterfalls and forest in every direction. The sky was deep blue above us every day. It was truly fantastic! We spent the weekend camping, walking around in the calm valley, grilling sausages and marshmallows over the fire at night and just relaxing. The night's we're a bit cold in the tent as this was the end of November/beginning of December, but because of this the park was not nearly as crowded as it is in the summer and we were really happy that we decided to go! On the last day before going back we woke up early, packed a lunchbag and set out to hike up to Glacier Point, 2800 meters above sea level and about 1000 meters above us. The hike was pretty steep uphill but with great views all the way and 3 hours later we found ourselves finally outlooking the AMAZING view from Glacierpoint. The valley lay just down below us and we could see all the mountains, peaks and waterfalls surrounding us. Watch the pictures and you'll understand, even though they don't really make justice to what we saw. We had lunch in the sun and then eventually started walking back down again. That night we slept very good...
As for going back to SF we hadn't really decided how to, beacuse on getting there we felt that it was very expensive and complicated with public transportation. We figured that since this was the end of Thanksgiving weekend there would probably be someone from the park driving down towards the bay area that we could get a ride with, so we asked our closest tentneighbours. Turned out they were driving down there and they could make room for us, only they wanted to do some climbing first but we we're more then welcome to come along if we wanted to. We did, and so we spent the morning with this great group of friends having a really nice time watching them climb the steep mountain wall. At the end they encouraged JC to give it a try, wich at first he was not sure if he could do (it was not an easy climb) but of course, in the end decided to give it a try even if he would only make it a few meters. And that's how JC ended up climbing El Capitan, Yosemite, one of the most famous climbingspots in the world. Need I say he made it all the way? (At least to the end of the line...)
Thank you Dr T and Scott for the ride back down to the bay, we really enjoyed your company and the interesting discussions!
