Honeymoon Day 9

Today was our second day at Yosemite. We started out with breakfast at the food court, and discovered something very important about the breakfast coupon scheme. Apparently, if you get the correct cashier, you can get pretty much anything with the coupon. Alison had oatmeal and toast, I had a breakfast sandwich (gross) and cocoa puffs, and we shared some eggs and hash browns. However, in addition to breakfast we discovered that we could each get a sandwich on our coupons, so we also got lunch. If anybody happens to read this and is going to Yosemite, they should keep this little tidbit in mind. If you're hiking all day, it is very useful to get lunch at the bottom anyway.
After breakfast we finished getting ready, then headed over to the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. Today, we were looking forward to a 7-mile round trip with 2700' of elevation gain. At the bottom of the trail, there was a sign that read: "This challenging wilderness trail zigzags up about 60 switchbacks to Columbia Rock. From this vantage point, about a mile up the trail, hikers can enjoy spectacular panoramic views of Yosemite Valley and the peaks beyond. An easy half-mile beyond Columbia Rock is the first view of Yosemite Falls. The trail steepens for the last two miles to the overlook at the brink of Upper Yosemite Falls." The final count runs like this. The first section of the trail contains 65 switchbacks in 1 mile. The middle, "easy" part has 8 in half a mile. The final section is 2 miles, and has 64 switchbacks. This hike took us about 6 hours to do a total of 9 miles. And at least 2/3 of the time was the way up. All the views were neat, and we definitely loved the hike, even though it was pretty strenuous in the biting 80 degree heat.
Our enjoyment was diminished somewhat by some of the other people on the trail with us. There were ridiculously many people on this trail with either little or no water, pretty dumb for a 7-mile (to the Upper Falls and back) hike over this kind of trail. Who hikes that far even on flat ground without water? Stupid people, that's who. People looked like they were about to pass out walking up this thing. We ended up passing everybody on the trail, and we're not even in very good shape. The NPS could also do a better job of warning people about the climb. Not that it would matter, but at least then they couldn't be blamed in any way. Also, apparently nobody wants you to pass them on the way down the mountain, because I think that not one group moved aside for us unless we had been breathing down their neck for a couple switchbacks already. I mean, I can't think of any other reason why we would be hiking so close behind them.
We got up to Upper Yosemite Falls around 12:30, and decided to have lunch up there. Our sandwiches were rather good, probably the best thing we've gotten at the cafeteria so far. We downed those, then decided to move on to Yosemite Point, from where you're supposed to have a good view of the Valley. The trail up here was mostly snow-covered, so we had to be bad people and follow footprints of people who didn't bother to use the trail in order to get up to the point. We didn't stay there very long, coming back down to Upper Yosemite Falls to actually go to the vantage point. The trail down to the viewpoint is super crazy, and they have hand rails installed to keep you from plunging over the sheer cliff face (part of the trail has the rail on the wall side of you, so there's nothing between you and certain death). Alison did much better than me here. We took some photos, then slowly climbed the stairs back up to the main vantage point.
We immediately took off for the bottom. On our way away from the overlook we ran into a couple guys in their 30's who had apparenty decided it would be a good idea to attempt the hike with absolutely no water or food or anything else, for that matter. They had both removed their shirts at some point, and had come up with the brilliant idea of using snow as a surrogate for water. That's right, they were eating the snow that had been on the ground, probably for months, collecting all sorts of tasty stuff. Now, it's one thing to not bring any water on a hike. It's quite another to decide that, when you get deathly thirsty and feel like you can't go on, you must recourse to eating snow to survive. It is quite a thirdly incredibly idiotic decision to then continue hiking to the top, relying on snow to keep you hydrated. Survival of the fittest, indeed.
On our way down, despite it getting on toward 3, we ran across many more people who were still climbing up toward the top. Some of them were a long ways from the top. We also passed some people on their way down about halfway down who we had passed about halfway up on our way up the mountain. They were taking it very slow, and looked like they were not really fit for this trail. Perhaps it is for people like them that they have a large number of spots in the parking lot reserved for Search & Rescue, a thing we didn't really appreciate until we had done the hike.
After finally reaching bottom, we headed back to our room to wash the sweat off, then went over to the Mountain Room Lounge for some well-deserved dinner and drinks (24 miles in 2 days with over a mile of elevation gain!). Alison started off with a Lemon Drop, but I stuck to non-alcoholic, caffeinated beverages at first. I worked on blogs for awhile, successfully saving over yesterday's after finishing it. After hanging out for a little, we moved toward the central fire pit to have dinner. It turns out that the "dinners" they offer there are pre-packaged, and pretty much the same thing that is available in the food court, only in the food court you don't feel compelled to pay somebody for unwrapping it for you. I still ordered the same turkey sandwich I'd had for lunch, and Alison ordered the brie and fruit plate. I tried the Yosemite Pale Ale, which was quite good, though heartily overpriced ($4.50 for a glass, not a pint - that's $6). After dinner we moved to the real reason we'd gone here for a meal - they offer a S'mores package for less than $3 that contains everything you need to make 4 S'mores. We toasted our marshmallows and made S'mores and generally had a fine time there. It was an excellent way to cap the evening. Plus, Alison got to watch some NCAA tournament basketball during dinner, so she was pretty jazzed about that too.
Following dinner we headed back to the room to get packed for the journey home. Since we had gotten so many souvenirs on our trip (such as the basket that Alison got for me in Mendocino, my good luck cat from Chinatown, and various sundry other things), we were pretty sure that our bags, overstuffed on the way out, were going to burst this time. However, we miraculously fit all of our stuff into our luggage with a tiny bit of room to spare. Things actually fit better this time than they had originally. Wild. This activity pretty much tired us out, so we went to bed soon after we were done.