Mountain Goats

We do like the pretty snowscapes that only winter brings. And yeah, skiing is fun but inline-skating along the beach involves less equipment and less clothing. We went to Seoul for our honeymoon in January 2006 - cos I had won a 5D4N stay in a serviced apartment (yes, I'm a lucky one) and so that we could go skiing together. How romantic.... not! The minus 6 degree Celsius weather drove us mad and the static electricity in the dry air made us miserable - we couldn't touch each other without getting zapped. Ouch. A week after we returned, we booked a beach holiday to Bali to 'recover' and had a proper honeymoon.

So venturing into the mountains is a rare occurrence for us. But we found ourselves, as expected, making a return trip to Yosemite the next day cos there was still so much more of it to experience. Also because The Weatherman had promised that it would be a sunny day with warmer temperatures. And look what his promise brought:

Sunny days are HERE!

We were better prepared for the snow this time - Dan in his spiffy new jeans purchased from Walmart (for just $11.50!) the night before and I wore pants and socks that covered my ankles. Still no gloves though :( So the power of self-denial came in useful:

YL (teasing): I see snowwww on the mountains still!

DC: No lah. Those are clouds. And white bunnies. Lots of them.

YL: Like Easter bunnies out in full force?

DC: Exactly.

En route to the Yosemite Valley, we stopped at one of the scenic spots for a picnic lunch - my lovely creation of Spam sandwiches, apples and mini Butterfinger and Baby Ruth chocolates. Despite Dannie almost keeling over after overdosing on my generous portions of Spam, it was a nice lunch.

Picnic bench with a view. Priceless.

We arrived at the parking lots to find them all full and had to squeeze our car into a lot and pray hard that no one would scratch it while negotiating the turn. We decided to attempt a short easy trail to Mirror Lake. It was a scenic walk and we stopped along the way to photograph more waterfalls. Dannie got bitten by a bug - the acting bug - and perched himself on a huge rock, pretending to be the Lion King - or the Loin King, as he prefers to be called. I'm just glad he didn't decide to mate with any of the other mountain lions, which were suppose to be skulking around in the park. Thankfully, he decided to return to his original human state after 5 minutes of entertaining his wife.

Behold the Loin King!

Mossy scapes.

Find a quiet spot.

It's a long journey to the ocean, but every little drop of water will get there someday.

Water making it's ardous journey over rocks and boulders.

Rush hour

Mirror Lake comprises of 2 pools - creatively named the Upper Pool and Lower Pool. Gee. The Upper Pool is larger and is set in a wide, open area and there are lots of families milling around.

Mirror mirror in the lake, tell me where's the best chocolate cake.

The Lower Pool has quite a different character - darker, almost gloomy and much quieter. Beautiful in it's own not-so-cheery way. Besides us, there's only one other family there and two photographers with impressive-looking cameras complaining about "the light" making their photographs look "very flat". I just photographed the best I could:

Lower Pool, Mirror Lake.

Take me to your Riverrrr....

Glued onto gloom.

What lies beneath?

On our way back to the trailhead, we spotted three deer (one bounced right across our path!) and one large grey squirrel with a handsome bushy tail. We keep a far distance from squirrels, no matter how cute they look. I'm convinced they carry diseases like rabies (and we heard someone say they carry the plague too?!) - and we're not vaccinated against rabies. And people have asked us to return home with babies, not rabies. I read in the park brochure about person who got attacked by a squirrel and his hand needed 13 stitches. I bet he got rabies too. I bet Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty also caught rabies from their furry Disney friends who helped the girls with their housework. I don't even want to think about what Beauty caught from her Beast.

You might have rabies? Don't be silly my princess! Such nonsense! Bibitty Boppity Boo!

His Royal Glovelessness wanted to make a snowman. So we stopped at the designated Snow Play Area on our way out (which I assumed was safe to play in and that I wouldn't get swallowed up by some snow-covered cavernous hole or stabbed by a stick hiding in the snow) for Project Snowman. Dannie instructed that it had to be a life-size replica of himself. Having an additional Dannie to wait on me sounded like a good idea so I went along with it.

Nice clean snow area for Project Snowman.

Always pick the freshest ingredients to make your snowman.

Trying to roll snow with our bare hands was a really stupid thing to do. Our hands were so cold that they hurt. How is it possible to still feel pain when your digits are frozen to extreme numbness? Thus, we decided to downsize the lifesize replica into Dan's Mini Me instead. 3 minutes later:

DC: Baby, what does frostbite feel like?

YL: Err, how would I know? Can you even feel frostbite?!

We made another executive decision to create a non-human snowcreature instead, which did not involve rolling snow into balls. We kicked snow into a heap until it started resembling Jabba The Hutt. And so, our Baby Snowhutt was born.

Baby Snowhutt. Born 11 April 2009. Weight unknown.

Baby Snowhutt Version 1.1 Newly improved right eye (bigger) and Buff accessory included.

Dannie has named him Pino Cho. When Pino Cho tells a lie, IT (as represented by a prickly pine cone) gets longer. And we're not referring to the snowhutt's nose here. We had to leave our baby in the snowfield though - he would have become dessert in sunny Singapore. Anyone wanna adopt Pino Cho?

Freshly-made baby snowhutt up for adoption.

YL

written by  DanYilin on April 11, 2009 from Yosemite National Park, California, United States
from the travel blog: go.
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