One Foot in Front of the Other

Yosemite!! I was insanely excited for this portion of the trip, and rightfully so, because Yosemite is a majestic place that I think everyone should experience sometime in their life. It's not the easiest national park to visit though... let me tell you why. First of all, unless you have an insane budget, you should maybe consider camping because the lodges even remotely close to Yosemite (in El Portal or other surrounding towns) START at about $300 per night for the bug infested dumpy room (just going off yelp reviews here). I spent a significant amount of time poking around Airbnb trying to find us a reasonable place to stay. We settled on a cabin in the town of Mariposa which was neither close to the park or a bargain... but it was large and had every amenity we could ever need. The other reasons that make Yosemite tricky include the fact that majority of the main trail heads are inside Yosemite Valley which gets horribly backed up with traffic and parking is tricky (don't you dare try to arrive later than probably 10-11am if you hope to park your car). Once you're parked, there is a free shuttle that can take you to all of the different trail heads in the valley. And lastly, Yosemite is difficult exactly because the trail heads start in Yosemite Valley... VALLEY. Haha. Get my point? The elevation changes for every hike are just bonkers... but I'll get into that later.  

We had two days to hike here so we planned some pretty ambitious endeavors. Day 1 would be the Four Mile Trail up to Glacier point. Now... I admit right away that you can drive to Glacier Point... but this trail looked like an amazing experience so I said, let's do this. It's 4.6 miles one way... which, when you're a runner, doesn't actually sound like very much at all. What I didn't pay attention to was the elevation change... 3200 ft... thirty two hundred feet. Yeah... whoops. We did it though! 

Courtney's looking so fly close to the beginning of the hike. We were not making happy faces later, lol

Wow, all those switchbacks and we get a beautiful view of upper and lower Yosemite falls! 

Four mile trail... a better name for it would be four hour trail because that's how long it took us to get to the top. Man, it was brutal. We're in good shape too... I'm not going to sugarcoat this and be like yeah we beasted four mile trail... there were moments were we were not actually sure we were going to make it and LOTS of moments of "why are we doing this".... but we did it! Lots of water and sunscreen application breaks and just being patient with ourselves and we made it! 

So at the top there's a whole little cafe with ice cream! We earned this! 

Glacier Point lookout! That's Half Dome on the left and Yosemite Falls

The night before, we had gone grocery shopping to stock up our cabin and to pack lots of food for these hikes. We sat at the top of the mountain and ate our sandwiches, potato salad and fruit before scoping out the trail to Sentinel Dome. Now, the drive up to Glacier Point is an entire hour from Yosemite valley (and our cabin is an hour and twenty away from yosemite valley)... in hindsight, one hour each way is a lot less than the 6.5-7 hours we spent hiking up and down, but we both agreed we were glad we hiked it! Just next time can we not destroy our legs in a very hilly San Francisco before trying this... please. But if you do drive up, you get the option to continue on to Sentinel Dome and Taft Point which are only a couple miles out. Well, I had fully intended on continuing on to Sentinel Dome which was the closer of the two... we made it about 20 steps before we were like we can't do this. We can't go a whole other mile upwards :( Listen to your bodies. Always. We made the right decision - Next time we're driving up like all those flip flop hikers!

Now, the thing about climbing up a mountain for four hours is that you still don't expect it to take very long to climb down... I think we were both under the false impression that we'd be back rather quickly... well, going down in almost as difficult as going up but in a different way. Two and a half hours, a couple rolled ankles and some very sore legs later, we FINALLY made it back to the valley. 

How I spent that evening :P poor little swollen ankles! Courtney was on the couch with her ice packs as well, lol. We made a frozen pizza, had beer and a pint of Ben and Jerry's this night. We earned that too! 

Day two: Mist trail to Vernal and Nevada falls :) after draining all our blisters and stuffing our feet back into our hiking shoes, we were ready for day two. I'm sorry I'm not sorry if some super hiker reads this and thinks I'm wuss... we're not professionals! Haha. In fact, on the four mile trail, we were joking about how our parents used to take us on hikes as kids and we thought it was torture. LOL. Arches national park comes to mind for me and Courtney's kid hiking torture experience was Smokey mountains. We can't believe that we're putting ourselves through this for fun now! The pictures speak for themselves though (of course the pictures don't do anything justice either), Yosemite makes you work hard and then rewards you handsomely. 

The very beginning of the mist trail up to Vernal falls :) 

The trail to Vernal falls is an "easy" 1.6 miles... it starts off super vertical and miserable just like it seems all the trails here do... :P and then it takes you along the rushing river and leads you to a rock staircase that's completely soaking wet due to getting absolutely hammered by the waterfall. You literally get drenched on this trail... it's insane. We made sure to put away our phones from taking pictures as we could barely see through the water while navigating slippery rocks upwards while other people are trying to climb down. I was also trying to not completely soak my shoes... I was mostly successful. Courtney described the soaking section of the hike "liberating" and I totally agree!

The top of Vernal Falls! You can see on the left where people are climbing up.

Courtney actually saw one of the actors from Breaking Bad on this hike. Dean Norris! I had never heard of him, lol. She didn't say anything to him to not interrupt his family vacation, haha.

Yes that's a tin foil spoon! So crafty! Nothing was going to keep us from our potato salad... certainly not forgetting our forks. 

Continuing on on this trail takes you to this really neat (and a little dangerous) section of rushing water heading to the waterfall. I was amazed at the amount of water moving as such a high speed. It makes you feel tiny and powerless for sure. 

It's kind of funny, we stayed in Mariposa, CA which is the Spanish word for butterfly. Courtney had mentioned to me that mariposa was her mom's favorite word in Spanish just early this day, and would you know... we saw many butterflies this hike. This little guy landed right next to me when I was sitting by the rushing water. I don't really believe in seeing signs or anything like that, but it's hard not to feel something in times like that <3

More selfies :)

Against our probably better judgement, we decided to take the John Muir trail down instead of going back the way we came and getting all soaked again. The problem with this trail is that it goes UP before it goes down... which we were not about with our tired legs. On the plus side though, we would have not seen these amazing view of Vernal and Nevada Falls otherwise. 

Amazing Vernal Falls

Nevada Falls from a distance! We would do this hike next time :) it's a continuation uphill from Vernal Falls for about 2.5 miles. 

That wraps our eventful two days of adventuring around Yosemite! I don't have a ton of national park experience yet, but when I compare it to Olympic, Yosemite seems to be a little more majestic but it makes you work SO hard for it, these hikes do not mess around. We were also a little disappointed that we didn't see any bears :P If we ever make it back here, I would definitely do the hike to Upper Yosemite Falls (the waterfalls from the pictures at the beginning). We went to Lower Falls, which was basically a stroll on a sidewalk compared to the other hikes. It was overrun with flip flop hikers, haha. We would also do the hike up to Nevada Falls. We would still NOT do Half Dome. Can you even believe that there's a hike scaling the side of Half Dome? It includes seven miles of intense uphill and switchback hiking, then 400 ft of walking up the side of Half Dome using chains to help you. Then you have to go all the way back! They only let about 75 people do this hike per day and you have to apply for a permit well in advance!

So we wiped the dirt off our legs with baby wipes (since we had to check out of our cabin) and set off on the long drive back to our hotel by the San Francisco airport for our flights the next morning. Another best friend vacation in the books! I love adventuring with this girl - we have all the right priorities... mainly food, but also mountains and waterfalls :) I think it sparked something in Courtney because even though we both had swollen ankles and a touch of altitude sickness (maybe mixed with exhaustion, not sure exactly what it was), she was already talking about which national park we would visit next year! I still haven't been to Colorado... maybe it's time! 

So that's it for now! Andy and I have our giant Iceland adventure coming up in September that I can't WAIT to share on here! 

Save Me San Francisco

Every year for the past two years I've gone to DC to visit Courtney and I've never blogged about it... why not? Because pretty much all we do there is eat and silly things like buy a dozen gourmet cupcakes and pay way too much money to pet cute kitties in a cafe setting. Last year I realized I had some extra time off around the Fourth of July and we decided to meet in California for a change of scenery :) This trip was five nights total with two of them being in San Francisco, two of them in a cabin close to Yosemite and then the last one at an airport hotel for ease of making our morning flights home (Yosemite is a 4 hour drive). 

As you probably already imagined, this post is going to be mostly about food :P This is a Becca and Courtney adventure after all.... always on the hunt for the best noms. We landed at SFO around 9:30pm - Courtney got there a little earlier... she literally flew coast to coast from DC. Super classy 4-5 hour domestic flights still don't serve any food (not even those dinky bags of pretzels), so after we took an uber to the Airbnb studio we booked, we set off on a hunt for food. It's the city... places must still be open at 10:30 right? Nope. Bars were open though... desperate for something besides beer for dinner, we used Grub Hub to order a pizza from a local place that didn't arrive until midnight (2am Chicago, 3am DC time). 

The studio we booked is a tiny 200 square foot converted garage/basement type dwelling. It had enough room for a bed, small kitchenette and bathroom and not much else (like sitting or walking lol). The neighborhood is called NoPa (North of Panhandle) or Western Addition. In the morning we decided to walk to the Presidio neighborhood because it looked like a large green space on the map that would lead us to the Golden Gate Bridge. Omg don't do this. Presidio is mostly residential and it takes forever to get around on foot... for heaven's sake, take a car or public transportation to the bridge. 2.5 hours and several blisters later, we're at the bridge. Woo! 

It was crazy windy there! 

Man, all the walking made us hungry! We ubered our way over to China Town to grab some lunch at the Lai Hong Lounge... but when we got there, we were met by a massive group of people waiting around for tables. The vast majority of the people waiting were Chinese, so we figured the food was definitely worth the wait. They have you fill out a sheet of what you want to order and when you're finally seated (I think we waited a good 45 minutes), you hand over your menu and you cannot make changes after that! They immediately bring you tea and print out your order on a receipt and set it on your table so the servers know what to bring you. The food here is AMAZING. Come here hungry and feast. 

And don't worry, we saved room for dessert. All that waiting around at Lai Hong Lounge gave us some time to research an ice cream adventure. This little shop called the Baked Bear will make you an ice cream cookie sandwich where you can mix and match the cookie and ice cream flavors as well as various toppings. They will "hot press" the sandwich for you to make the cookies warm... we did it but I don't necessarily recommend it :P All it did was make my ice cream melt just enough to slip all over - I had to eat the whole thing with my spoon... but that's where my complaining stops. This place was awesome - I had chocolate with snickerdoodles + almonds, Courtney had salted caramel ice cream with chocolate chip cookies + brownie bits. I told you, we do not mess around with food :)

More wandering around doing touristy things! Here is Lombard street, the famous winding road.

Painted Ladies in Alamo Square

We also went to the Fisherman's Wharf - this is mostly a tourist area with lots of street shopping and food - which we were actually full by this point - but I did see lots of clam chowder bread bowls going around. There is another location for the Baked Bear down here and it was slammed. Glad we went to one near Chinatown :) San Francisco is pretty neat in that you can walk a couple blocks and just feel the cultures change. Chinatown is directly adjacent to North Beach, which is San Francisco's Little Italy... and it actually felt like Europe. The Italian cafes had al fresco dining set up all over the sidewalk and we heard more Italian than English for a few blocks. We wished we could have fit more into our stomach by this point because the pasta was looking great... guess we'll have to go back! 

Exhausted from trekking around all day, we headed back to the studio to clean up before dinner. On our walk to dinner, we walked right through the Panhandle (a long, narrow park) and stumbled into Haight and Ashbury neighborhood - the famous neighborhood known for the beginning of the hippie counter culture revolution. This place is like dread locks and weed central... plus head shops every other store and other specialty shops, restaurants and bars. This neighborhood has apparently also been home to The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin... as well as the first ever head shop (no surprise there). 

We had dinner at a French-American place called Zazie in the Cole Valley neighborhood just a few blocks further south. This dinner was delicious... Chevre-arugula-fig bruchetta was one of the best things I ate in this city (goat cheese and all actually, it just wasn't very goat-y lol). 

"Baked hot chocolate" it was basically the center of a molten chocolate cake with toasted marshmallows on top. YUM.

No line for a tip!! This restaurant does not expect tips because they pay their servers a "living wage"... and guess what - our service was superb :)

After dinner, we went back to Haight-Ashbury for a drink at an eclectic dive bar called Zam Zam. The bartender had a spider tattooed on his face and Courtney was pretty sure she saw him do cocaine behind the bar. I did notice him get super happy and singing along with the house music about halfway through our time there... we left after one drink. I should note that we never felt unsafe in this city... ever. Not sure what it is about SF, but it feels pretty safe even when you're two women wandering around after dark.

The next morning we had brunch at Nopa (the restaurant). We actually tried to book this place for dinner but it was completely booked up, so we settled for brunch. This might have been my favorite meal in the city and definitely my favorite cocktail :) 

Brunchin' like champions

We walked to Golden Gate Park after brunch 

We decided to pick up our rental car in the early afternoon and head out to our cabin nearby Yosemite in a town called Mariposa. We stopped for lunch at In and Out Burger... these are the Animal Style fries off their secret menu... they're cheese fries with onions and "special sauce", aka thousand island. I'm incredibly biased of course, but Portillos is way better :P Glad to have finally tried it though! 

I definitely think San Francisco deserves a re-visit sometime in the future. I'd love to stay a little longer and get a better feel for the city - but I knew it would feel like a bit of a whirlwind. We needed that extra time for hiking in Yosemite! I wish I had known, though, that all those city hills would destroy my legs going into two long days of hiking... we had the Four Mile Trail up to Glacier Point planned for the first day and the Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada falls for the second. We were nervous going in but we still had no idea what was in store... to be continued...