Yosemite Birthday Trip!

My birthday was over the weekend, and I opted to spend my happy day with the Yosemite Conservancy on a guided educational hike. We went to Ackerson Meadow (which was recently restored as a part of Yosemite National Park) and to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to see Wapama Falls.

Here is a really excellent video explaining what was going down at Ackerson Meadow and some information on the restoration efforts. In short, there was a mini grand canyon forming in the meadow and destroying the meadow. The mini grand canyon has been filled and the meadow has been restored.

And it’s absolutely stunning.

If you have the extra pennies, please consider contributing to the Yosemite Conservancy. Yosemite is one of my favorite parks, and my spouse and I donate every year to preserve this wonderful piece of nature.

Spoiler alert: I survived the walk, saw the falls!

Second Spoiler Alert: Ouch.

We stayed at Evergreen Lodge right outside of the Hetch Hetchy gate at Yosemite.

Day 1: the drive to Yosemite.

It was basically an hour of this, and it was wonderful. Yes, I only have one picture from the drive to Yosemite. (I might have been just staring at the window having a veg. I REALLY needed a veg.)

I do have a photo of the one bedroom in the cabin, though. It was super cute, much liked.

Day 2: Ackerson Meadow

We explored the restored Ackerson Meadow with Cat, a hydrologist from the National Park Service, and Dan, our naturalist guide from the Yosemite Conservancy. Cat (pictured below) taught us so much about the ecology and restoration efforts in the park.

We totally scrambled under a fence to go visit a very cool section of the meadow. It was amazing. A shout out to both Dan and Cat for giving us such a wonderful day at the meadow. (You can donate to the Yosemite Conservancy here.)

The lupin was absolutely plentiful in the meadow, and it smelled absolutely divine. Here’s a singular picture of a lupin doing lupin things.

Here is a pretty cluster of lupin doing lupin things.

Dew was kissing the lupin leaves, and while I might have taken fifty photos trying to catch it, this was the only one that turned out decently. Oopsy.

Birds on a rock doing bird things in a field of lupin flowers. (I believe these are a pair of Brewer’s Blackbirds.)

My best guess for this bird is a yellow rumped warbler.

This is brown-headed cowbird.

Next up was a very exciting bird! This is a Northern Flicker / red-shafted Flicker, and this beauty put on a show for us.

To depart from birds for a moment, we got lucky enough to see a small herd of deer in the meadow! This was the best of the pictures I got of them. My camera had an obsessive compulsive tree stump disorder on the day we went to the meadow. It really wanted to photograph stumps and branches rather than the critters I was hunting with my lens.

Day 3: Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

In the photograph above, you can see our destination. There are two falls visible in the photo, and we went to the lower one of the two.

I am too lazy to go back to Day 2, but I wanted to share this photo of the brown-headed cowbird.

The photo above this comment was taken with my phone at the starting line for the Wapama Falls hike.

Note: I might have gone “ooooh boy, this is going to be rough.”

I was 100000% right, but it was very much worth it.

Also, a HUGE shout out to ON shoes… I bought a pair of their shoes for this hike. They had approximately one mile of walking on them before this.

I went 5.66 miles without a single blister in sight.

I considered proposing to my shoes. Repeatedly.

I did not propose to my shoes.

Here’s a link to them, though. Highly recommended.

The weather was beautiful, the scenery was spectacular, and I would 100% do this trip again in a heartbeat… I mean, after my legs recover. I mean, considering in 2020 I capped out at a quarter mile at a time with a cane, I did fucking fabulous.

Sun glare was a bit of a problem, but this was part of the crew I hiked with to Wapama Falls. (Really nice folks!) Dan, our naturalist guide, is the first person in the line.

A pair of ospreys decided to grace us with their presence! They were a delight to watch.

The dam is in the background with one of the osprey. The far side of the dam where that road is was our starting point for the hike. (We were taking a breather on a bit of a cliff… it was tall. I am not. I stayed far from the ledge hahaha)

I think this is granite crack monkey flower. (A search on google confirms yes, this is the granite crack monkey flower.) Absolutely tiny, absolutely gorgeous.

We also saw pansy lipped monkey flower and standard monkey flower, but I did not get any good pictures. My camera betrayed me. (pout, pout)

Harlequin Lupin.

But seriously, before the next photos, it’s time for some context. This was a year after my injury, and I struggle-bussed to make any progress beyond this point, just as a reminder of then versus now.

This was as fast as I could go and was trying to restrengthen my ankle… which resisted such activities. But yeah. 25 minutes on flat walk, with a cane. (I couldn’t stay balanced at all without the cane back then, so while I could do a decently tolerable pace, it was with mobile aids because they were needed.)

Let’s just say that the walk to Wapama Falls was not at all flat. I was absolutely using a mobility aid (I love you, my pink TrailBuddy) for this walk, but most people were because this terrain was not beginner level. Take a mobility aid!! Better an aid than a fall.

This was only for the first chunk of the hike.

We started at 9 am and got back to the starting place at around 3 pm to give you an idea of how long we were hiking.

In this photo (at the osprey spot), Dan was teaching us all sorts of things about the area. It was delightful!

I learned a very valuable lesson on this hike: declines are a great deal more worrisome for me than inclines. My weak side (ankle AND knee) do not mind inclines for the most part. The declines? Let’s just say I had to creep down anything. I was definitely the slowest person there, but I did it, and I’m super proud of that!

I’m pretty sure I witnessed five or ten years of life flee my body when I turned around to take a picture of the staircase of death I navigated down. Without falling or dying. (But I had some serious concerns!)

Note: Yes, I am afraid of heights. Yes, I was a very brave person.

We made it to the falls!!

So, the way back was particularly rough for me, so I was super slow. At one point, I had to take a breather to use my inhaler. (Boo, asthma.) It was fine… because sometimes, while the early bird gets the worm… the slowpoke gets to have a close encounter with a bobcat.

My husband spotted the bobcat and was like “Is that a CAT?”

I spot said cat a moment later and reply, “And that would be a bobcat.”

We stop. We wait. While friend-shaped, NOT friend. We were far closer to the bobcat than either one of us was actually comfortable with.

We were absolutely delighted the bobcat did not take offense to our existence. Hah! The bobcat was quite kind and did not opt to eat our faces. Absolutely a gorgeous animal, and seeing this beauty was a highlight of the entire trip.

This view, though… it was so worth it.

I got this as a reward for surviving the hike. It was absolutely delicious.

Day 4: Rest and Relaxation!

Mourning doves outside of our cabin.

This is a western Tanager that was chilling outside of our cabin.

In an effort to loosen our poor legs up, we went around a nature trail near our lodge. The wildlife decided to reward our effort! Yes, I felt like a stalker trying to get this picture.

This raven posed for us for a while because Very Nice Birb, 100% friend-shaped.

Day 5: Homeward bound!

At this point, I decided it was time to read a book because we left the fun mountains and entered homeward stretch we’ve seen many times before.

Please note that I am posting this on day 5 of the trip and I’m ridiculously tired.

Please buy my books so I can afford to go on more national park trips. (hahahahaha)