After returning from San Francisco we spent another day at Aunt Debbie's. Julie’s cousin stopped by and the girls loved swimming and playing with her daughter all day.
The next morning we loaded up the bikes and ourselves and headed out again. Although unimpressed with the 3 hr drive, the girls perked up when we got far enough into the park to see the valley and all it's splendor. We stopped at an overlook for our first views of Half Dome and El Capitan before finishing the ascent into the canyon and stopping at Bridalveil Falls. We decided to do the short hike up to the falls and the girls had fun scrambling on all the rocks.
On our way back to the car we stopped once again to play on the rocks near the creek - this time the older two got a little braver and ventured further out. As Julie and I were yelling to Palmer that she "had gone far enough" we realized she couldn't hear us over the sound of the stream and could only watch as she stepped on a slippery spot and slid into the river, plunging below the surface for a brief second before popping up with a shocked look on her face. I reached out and pulled her to shore - she was very cold and very scared, but otherwise unscathed. When we got back to the car we changed into dry clothes and headed to Curry Village to check into our hotel room, happy that the lesson of the day hadn't been worse than it was. The girls became very aware of water safety and pointed out dangerous and safe swimming locations for the rest of our stay.
After getting all checked in to our cool room (complete with loft) at the Stoneman House, we boarded a shuttle towards the main visitor center to grab dinner and wait for our ranger led floor tour to start. The tour took place in an open air cart being pulled by a semi truck, with the ranger telling us stories about all the most famous bits of Yosemite. We found climbers on the face of El Capitan, looked back at the valley from tunnel view lookout, and learned the native names for all the water falls over the course of the two hour tour. We highly recommend this tour to anybody who visits Yosemite.
The next morning was the start of our last day in the park and we decided to ride our bikes around the valley floor. The girls did amazing on what turned out to be close to 8 miles of riding. We went to the visitor center and earned junior ranger badges, hiked the loop out to lower Yosemite falls, and went to the sweet shop in the historic Ahwahnee hotel. Upon making it back to our car we found out the only two places to get food had 30 minute lines to place an order! We decided to make do with what we had in the cooler and made sandwiches, loaded up the bikes, and hit the road back. Before getting back to the trailer we had an excellent dinner at Market Tavern in Stockton.
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