Sweet Endings - Day 5 San Francisco, CA

Five days down and our time had come to say goodbye to our long awaited vacation in Yosemite.  It had nearly taken an act of Congress to pull this time off...with Chad's crazy work schedule, I was grateful to have this time with him, but I was also kind of looking forward to my bed again.  It seemed quite obvious to spend our last day on vacation in San Francisco.  A nice dinner, a warm shower and a cozy bed was all we needed to top off our amazing vacation.

Farewell Yosemite.  Until we meet again.  :(

The short but extremely STEEP way down

Making our way...

To our swanky hotel.  The Prescott

We also thought it fitting to end our last night with a trip to the very restaurant we came to on our honeymoon almost one year ago.  It was just as we had left it...delicious! 

Frascati's Italian Restaurant - recommended by local and friend Jennifer Fontenella for our honeymoon.  We liked it so much, we came back!

So many wonderful things to choose from!

I'll be the first to say that I'm not really a red wine person... 

I'll almost always choose white wine over reds any day..but this one...

Yeah.. I'll take that one.  Mmmmmm...

I chose the chicken.  Made simply..but OH. SO. TASTY!

Mmmmm....carbs... ;) 

And who could go without

Sweet Endings.... 

My last birthday treat....til next year ;)

Chocolate Bread Pudding!!

Yosemite Vacation - Day 4 Limping our way through it

No steps or down hills please!

On this day I could honestly say that I felt ALL of my 30 years and 2 days.  After the hike we had the day before, we were lucky we even made it out of our cabin at all.  As the day began, much like most of the other days (at the butt crack of dawn, still being on Texas time) we took advantage of the extra time to make our way through our morning routine.  This time, SLOWLY but ever so surely.  I didn't quite pay attention, but I'm sure that everyone had a good laugh at us as we hobbled around Yosemite Valley touring the museum and visitors center.  What OLD FARTS WE ARE!!  It's a good thing we left touring the valley, the FLAT valley (thank goodness!) to this day of heavenly NOTHING-NESS!

The visitors center was actually quite interesting..

Mr. John Muir

This tree, which fell in 1912 was nearly 1000 years old!

Something in this picture is not like the other... :)

Head stones each simply labeled.

A Boy. A Frenchman. Wolcock. and Boston. 

Kinda sad...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this entry is NOT ADA compliant.

Just a thought.... The tree was OBVIOUSLY there first..why not just MOVE the door?

And while you're at it... MOVE the building TOO?!?!  Geez!  

So somewhere on this HUGE expanse of El Capitan's rock face...

We spot some rock climbers!  And by the looks of it, they were up there over night.  

Their mid-air make shift cots gave it away..  Can you see it??

Turns out there was two guys...One took off about 20 minutes before the other on his ascent, while the other stayed behind to take down their cot and pack up.  Crazy huh?

Looking left, we just so happen to spot another set of

two people making their way DOWN El Capitan

This one seems to be SETTING UP for a night on the rock.  

The climber on the bottom begins to unpack 

While the other two in the middle of the rock make their way up, slowly but surely

In his youth, Chad and his friends jumped with reckless abandon into this river.  

(The water was obviously higher back then)

From this bridge.  

Looking up to the sky where our first night photos were taken

Day two of night time camera experimentation

These came out tons better!

Turns out that car lights were actually a good thing and HELPED light up this tree :)

Taken right outside our cabin #550 :)

Yosemite Vacation - Day 3 Panorama Trail

So instead of boring you with needless dialog, I'm just gonna get straight to the point.  This day was spent making the longest, most grueling hike I'd ever been on.  8.2 miles..(sounds do-able, I think I can hang) from 7,200 feet above..from Glacier Point (again...it's downhill, how bad could it really be?!...right?? )  Holy CRAP was I wrong!!  I was fine til the last two miles of straight down steep "steps", aka granite boulders off the sides of three different waterfalls.  Wow.  The views were definitely worth the trouble though.. and I'm just glad I made it down to the valley without amputating my own legs.  ;)

check out our awesome views!

 Glacier Point is actually the rock jutting out the far left hand side of the picture.

The patch of green waaaaaaaaaayyyy down there was our goal for the day.  

Curry Village in Yosemite Valley.  

(here's where you say a little prayer to the hiking gods for getting us down without any incidents)

 Glacier Point again

And we're OFF!  

Our trek to Yosemite Valley

Pausing literally every five minutes to take a picture... 

What?!  We couldn't help it...the views were breathtaking! ;)

Can you spot the falls in the distance?  That was our second stop, 

Nevada falls, where 

we stopped for an afternoon snack!

Half Dome in the distance?  

 I still can't believe Chad actually climbed to the TOP of that monster!  

Getting closer to Illiouette Falls

We MADE it...now time for lunch while watching the water flow by.  

Yosemite Contraband.  ;)

No questions about how one of these huge guys ended up at our house... 

Sssshhhhhh...

Somewhere in there my awesome husband took my backpack from me to lighten my load for a bit... 

What a sweetheart!

Half way there!

Our second waterfall stop.. Nevada Falls

Where we made a cute little furry friend.  :)

Don't be jealous Macie, we left him in Yosemite!

Off the edge at Nevada Falls

Our path leading us to the last falls of the day, Vernal

Vernal Falls seemed close enough... UNTIL we saw the way we had to get there!

Oh yeah.. millions and millions of small, medium and LARGE rocks to traverse.  

SERIOUSLY?!

Sometimes well defined steps... 

Other times... NOT SO MUCH!

Right along side the Nevada waterfall

Where we were expected to make our way down through these steps!

Yikes!  You can't even imagine how steep this seemed to me..

Happy little guy stuffing himself silly with acorns

Even HE made a friend.. I bet it just wanted his acorn ;)

Almost to the bottom!

This was actually the top of the last waterfall of the day. 

Vernal Falls

And yes.. we had to get to the bottom of THAT one now... 

Our view along the Mist Trail.  

Thankfully the trail wasn't too misty this time of year cause I don't think I could've

 handled steep AND WET steps down.  

Taking a breather mid way to assess my surroudings..

What you don't see is the mile long CONTINUATION of these steps 

around the bend and along side the other part of that mountain

So I have to say that from this point on I really didn't like Chad very much anymore and pretty much just focused on getting down to the valley.  My feet hurt.  My toes were SUPER tender from slamming into the front of my shoes for the last 8 miles and my ankles felt swollen beyond my shoe's capacity.  It was pretty ridiculous I have to say.  I am glad to note that we did in fact make it down...sore and bitchy but happy to be back in our little tent cabin that night.  ;)