Miles hiked: 'bout 10.
Finished the last of the descent down in to Lyell Canyon, past bleary-eyed JMT hikers on just their 3rd or 4th morning, trying to figure out where to put all their things. The big peaks were pale in the early light, and down Along the valley floor the seed heads of the grass sparkled white with dew.
Now out along the valley, the trail following along to the side of the river, both leading down the broad steep-sided valley. Passing more hikers, some of them not paying much attention and getting startled when I come up behind them. The clouds have built up early today and there are a few scattered raindrops as early as 9.
Strolled in to the Tuolumne Meadows Store around 10 and settle in for the day. I'm planning to at least stay the night, and I'm not really feeling like pushing big miles over the next week, so sort of decide not to leave until tomorrow afternoon, and take perhaps a day longer to get to Echo Lake. So I have a pretty relaxing day. There are a handful of picnic tables under some Lodgepoles next to the parking lot for the combo store/post office/grilled food place, and sprawled out over on and around these tables was your standard collection of thru hikers and their dirty little piles of stuff and we boxes of food being leveraged into bear cans. I took up my spot on a table, got a peach and an avocado to go with my granola, and settled down to enjoy the show.
Spent most of the day like that, listening to stories of the trail and of parties hikers had found themselves a part of down in Yosemite Valley. I found a crime novel in the hiker box and started working through it, tentatively at first, not sure if I really wanted to read it. But I've been missing reading more and more as the trip's gone on, so I've got to fill the need somehow. Maybe I'll add a kindle. I got my food box and the package with my big net and wandered up to the backpackers camping area to set up, where strangely a lot of car campers have managed to camp also. I'm set up next to a couple brothers from Oregon, taking a roundabout road trip to New York.
Rain threatened all afternoon but never really happened, so in the evening after hanging out by my tarp, ready to dive in for cover, I headed back down to the store to get a few veggies to have along with the ramen I got from the hiker box. There was a bit of a hiker party going on by the picnic tables, so I also got another beer and hung out there a while. Back to camp and dinner eaten I crawled into bed and tried to write my journal while more and more drunk hikers arrived and noisily set up camp all around me.
Birds:
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Oregon Junco
American Robin
Hairy Woodpecker
White-crowned Sparrow
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Brewer's Blackbird
Hammond's Flycatcher
Red-winged Blackbird
Brown Creeper
Song Sparrow
Mountain Chickadee
Clark's Nutcracker
Western Wood-pewee
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