After a relatively strenuous day, the plan for day 2 was a lot calmer. We started off with the obligatory cooked camping breakfast (including a neighbouring squirrel!) and then headed off into Yosemite again.
We took the Northern road, which runs right through the park this time and headed up towards the North-East part of the park. This involved a fair amount of climbing (fortunately, with the SUV doing the work this time, rather than human legs!). As we climbed, the terrain and vegetation changed noticeably from the pine forests to relatively bare rock, with patches of some very pretty wildflowers.
Our destination for the day was a short (a few miles), and flat (maximum climb 100ft, or about 30m) hike along the Tuolumne River. One of the main goals was for Colin to do some fly-fishing.It was the perfect way to recover from the previous day's exertions and we thoroughly enjoyed the gentle stroll along the river, with pine forests and wide-open meadows. We stopped a couple of times for fishing breaks before reaching a lovely, quiet meadow spot where we had lunch with very few other people in sight or passing by.
Shortly after lunch we were somewhat surprised when two women walked up to the river (about 200m from where we were sitting in plain view, and much closer to some other people sitting on the river bank) and proceeded to strip off their clothes and plunge into the icy water before sunning themselves on the rocks! As most Americans are relatively prudish and wouldn't dream of being seen naked in public, we decided they must be European! (And, no, I didn't take any photos!).
After a post-lunch rest (for the non-fishers), Janet and I walked a little further along the river, enjoying the ever-changing interactions of the water and the rocks.
A rather long, but pleasant and scenic drive with musical accompaniment by Casting Crowns had us back at the camp site reasonably early for our dinner of braaied chicken and baked potatoes.It had been a very different day to the first, but served to highlight the amazing variety of terrain, vegetation and activities available in Yosemite.
On Sunday morning, Janet and Erin had to get up early (5:00am) to get back home as Erin was leaving on a church camping trip for the week. Colin did some last minute fishing before breakfast, after which we packed up (again, relatively easily in the RV) and headed back to Rocklin. The first part of the trip involved 5 miles of rather steep and winding descent, which we did very slowly in the "bus" and there was a lot of end-of-holiday-weekend traffic, so we took a lot longer to get back than Janet and Erin had.
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