Yosemite - Mirror Lake

After breakfast, we did an easy hike to Mirror Lake. Even though the water level is low, there was still a spot where you could get a nice shot of El Capitan with its reflection in the water. When the water level is higher, you can walk a little further around and get Half Dome in a reflection, but not today. It's still beautiful, as is. Sights: lupine (looks blue in the picture, but it was actually purple, so pretty - a whole patch of them just off the trail), squirrels, ravens, blue lizard, mother duck and ducklings, red-wing blackbird, trail horses.

The Mirror Lake hike is one I remembered keenly from my solo trip here in the summer of 1998 (as a graduation gift to myself, Bill was in summer school at Ole Miss working on his degree and graciously gave me his blessing for a solo trip). It was a great trip, but I wished he could be with me, as I knew he'd appreciate the park's beauty and grandeur. It is a dream realized for me, to be back here with Bill and the added extra special bonus of three awesome kids. When I did the Mirror Lake trail 14 years ago, I got the famous picture of El Capitan in reflection, and not but a few seconds later a mother duck and her ducklings swam through, causing a ripple in the water, of course, and making the reflection somewhat less mirror like. I've recounted this story a number of times to Bill, but he was tolerating another today when we walked up to the same spot. Right as I finished the story today, a mother duck and her ducklings swam by, in the same spot, in the same direction! We got a laugh out of that funny coincidence.

We came back to our tent cabin and packed up our stuff for the move to the better cabin (we're assuming it'll be better, can't see how it'd be worse). The bell person will come and move our bags when the new place is ready. It will be a hard-sided cabin, so we don't have to put our scented items (food and toiletries) in a bear box outside, everything can be in the cabin with us. Yay!

We caught lunch at the grill at Curry Village and now we're on the shuttle over to Yosemite Lodge, where we'll board onto an open-air tour vehicle (it looks like a flatbed trailer with benches added) to do a 2-hr valley tour.

We have been blessed with such nice weather on this trip. Can't believe how lucky we've been. Maybe we got all of our travel weather issues resolved with last year's tsunami adventure on the Big Island. ;)