Dancing in the dark

North Dome and Merced

So I had these past two days off. I had to take immediate advantage.

Me and two other guys decided to take off towards North Dome which is about 7,500 feet in elevation and about a 18 mile round trip hike. It was pretty exhausting, but quite worth it. We took off around 11 in the morning and started up towards the Upper Falls, where the path starts. We eventually got up to the top and it was BEAUTIFUL. I will post some pictures after this post. It was really tiring towards the end. I seemed to have been hiking with people with much longer legs than I and it was tough to keep up. We eventually made it back to civilization just after 9 pm. 10 hours of hiking can be very tiring. Sometimes when I get down and my knees are hurting and my feet are dead, I wonder why I did any of it. It isn’t until I realized how much I just hiked up and the unbelievable pictures I took while up there.

This path to North Dome is one of the hikes from the Valley that is not very popular. Most other trails you will see tons of people crossing your paths and such. The entire time on the way there past the falls, we were the only ones on the trail. The tranquility and peacefulness was amazing. When we were on top of North Dome none of us spoke for about a minute. It was so cool to be so far away from everything, but I could still see everything that creates all the noise. Moments like those, where I can be with myself… those make the hurt knees totally worth it.

On my second day off, I went through and took the little bus-erro to Merced to meet up with Jessica, my online friend for years. We had never really met before, but we got the chance to hang out today. It was only for a couple hours, but it was a lot of fun. It is weird to be in a position of meeting someone who I have known for a while… it was amazing though. We never really had any awkward ‘uh uhm we just met’ moments. It was almost like we had hung out before and we were just doing what we do. It didn’t hit me until we had just a bit of time left and I realized I just spent a day with someone I had never physically met before.

I bought an ALF lunch box and got to eat delicious cookies with Jessica and Melanie. This trip to California is really panning out to work out great.

Work tomorrow at 2pm. Better rest up for it, ha ha ha… 

Oh let the rain fall down and wash this world away. If it's ever gonna get any better, It's gotta get worse for a day.

It has been raining since I got down from half dome. It sucks, majorly.

Today is the first day of full sunlight since then. I didn’t think it would get that crappy here, but it definitely did. It all happened on Memorial Day weekend too. This is the busiest weekend starting off the summer. I work in the Ice Cream corner which means like rain+ice cream= no service, right? I forgot to mention it is an Ice Cream/Coffee drinks corner. We had lines the whole day for people buying Lattes, Mochas, Cappuccinos or god forbid Hot Chocolate.

I don’t mean to be mean/stereotypical but foreigners are the meanest people by far when it comes to belittling people when they don’t get their coffee in under 1 minute or if it isn’t hotter than the surface of the devil’s asscrack. Seriously, this steamed milk was just steamed to the hottest temperature our machine will let it.

Anyway, it is sunny out and starting tomorrow I have 2 days off. Woo! Happy days.

BUT, my friend Som is leaving. She is this cute Thailand Cashier who I talk to every morning. She gives us chocolates all the time and marks off my meal cards with a :D instead of a boring X. I’ll post pictures of her and her smilies when I get things together.  

Next hike up for grabs is either Glacier Point or North Dome!! AHHH I’ll let you guys know.  

Moonbows and Half Domes

So someone told me to go to Moonbow.

 What is moonbow you ask?

Silly you, you must not have lived in Yosemite forever.

Moonbow is an amazing phenomenon. Every full moon, the moon goes through a motion of roaming the skies of Yosemite. Eventually around midnight, the moon comes from behind the mountains in the south and casts its’ bright light on the lower Yosemite Falls. Someone tells me that every time this happens a rainbow formed by the moon is created.

 So we went. And it was awesome. I have never seen the moon cast a rainbow (obviously) until that night. It was long and very visible. I would have taken a picture, but it is only visible by having a tripod and taking a very patient picture. I don’t have a bone of patience in my body, so there ya go. 

In other news, today was my day off (Thursday). Like normal people, I decided to do a 16.4 mile round trip hike to one of the highest points in Yosemite valley, also the most popular rock in the park. I have shown you two pictures of it so far, and it was half dome. It is beautiful, but a very dangerous hike! Well dangerous only at the very end.

See once you get to the actual half dome (after a bajillion stairs and crap ton of climbing up) there is a set of cables to the top, since it is such a steep grade. People have fallen off of this area and died, but I had will power. Me and Lauren made it to the top and it was scary as HELL! There were about 30-40 mile per hour winds and lots of people were choosing not to hike up to the top. I was determined because I know once summer starts (a la next week) there is a LINE to wait to go to the top. Today there were 2 people on the stretch of 400 feet of cables. It was very scary, but we made it. It was unbelievable to see everything over the valley and all around us. It truly felt like the top of the world. Now will I ever go back up there again? It would take some convincing, but we will see. Pictures will come later… 

My job

I forgot to mention my job in that last post.

I am working at the Coffee Corner/Ice Cream stand.

I will be serving your hottest and coldest treats at Yosemite :D.

Drew Bachmann is also coming to visit tomorrow! AHHH FUN!! 

Settling down

So I am now a resident of Yosmite and it’s GREAT!

We got placed into our assigned housing “units”. They are called tent-cabins, but really they are wooden structures with tent material draped overtop of them. They are comfy though. 

 These camp grounds have a lot of ambiance of a summer camp, but for adults. They put all workers in the camp grounds that I am living at, so we are all getting to know one another. I also get to see a lot of the same people in our given training classes. 

 I have friends. Yes, it’s about time. There are a lot of us who are trying to stick together, but there are certain number of us who hike and eat together. I think we all have the same feeling. We want friends, desperately. We know how important these first weeks are to grip into and hold onto friends. It’s pretty awesome.

It is never not sunny here… which is awesome. We always get out of training early and our super nice trainers always let us go early and tell us its a beautiful day so we should go experience it. But it’s always beautiful? Either way, we take the shorter, yet paid longer, hours.

Sorry if I haven’t called anyone (especially parents). I am busy with training and my free time is generally 8 or 9pm. That’s cool right? I just keep forgetting that it is 11 or 12am EST. I’ll adjust :].

I thought I would tell you about some of my friends. We are all mostly from out of state too. Michael from Seattle. We are some of the only younger guys, so we’ve been stickin together. Andrea from Wisconsin (who goes to school in Michigan). We are co-workers and currently have the exact same schedule, so we became friends, haha. Tenaya, Andrea’s roommate, from some California city. She’s really cool and her parent’s grew up here.

OKAY BEDTIME NIGHT!