Sunday is my fun day

Saturday we work, work, work (and a little play) and Sunday is our play day. We go to meeting Sunday morning, then play all afternoon. Mr N did awesome at meeting yesterday, we only went out to the car once for a diaper change. The kids had snacks, then we went back in. We spent maybe 10 minutes in the car. Success.

I've been dying to get to Yosemite and get a spring picture of the "tunnel view" of the valley. So yesterday we headed to Yosemite, there is a place to pull off before you get down to the valley and you can see El Capitan and Half Dome, we always end up missing it. Yesterday we stopped and took in the view, the kids ran around and played, but we also noticed the haze that didn't make for a great photo opportunity. So we skipped the trip to the valley and headed up to Tioga Pass, which was Part 2 of our plan.

Here is the haze from the valley:

On our way up to Tioga Pass we saw a Marmot:

We stopped at Olmstead Point and climbed the rocks, the view of Half Dome from here was clear and beautiful. 

When we first got to Olmstead Point, we got out of the car and a couple walked by, Mr N walked with the lady, not realizing it wasn't Mommy. Daddy kept yelling his name but he didn't respond until I yelled his name. The lady he was walking next to reached out her hand to bring him back to us and he slapped it away and ran back to us. I apologized to her and my heart ached. 

While we were there Mr N was talking quite a bit, and even though his vocabulary is improving daily, he doesn't talk clearly. Most people can't understand what he's saying, his word for water is "baaah" or something similar, we could see Lake Tenaya in the distance and he kept saying "baaah". I cried as we walked back to the car, will he ever catch up?

After the kids played at Olmstead Point we headed on towards Lake Tenaya, but the lake was too high to play on the beach so we just used the bathrooms, ate a snack and let the kids play some more. Here is Lake Tenaya.

Mr N started falling asleep at this point so we just drove for a while and enjoyed the beauty. We went out the East entrance to Yosemite at Tioga Pass and continued on for a while. We came across a few frozen lakes that were just beautiful.

Then we stopped for another break and saw this river running down the mountain. The kids, of course, threw rocks. We got to the bottom of the valley then followed a road back up along the river with a few small falls along the way. 

We started heading back towards home, since we still wanted to do a hike. We stopped one more time to let the kids play for a while since it would be a half hour or better before we got to where we wanted to hike. We stopped at this meadow area where there was a snow melt river running through. There is more meadow area off to the right that we explored a little more.

Mr N dozed off as we headed back down towards Tuolumne Grove, but didn't fall asleep. We got to there at 20 till 8 and it was starting to get dark, but we really wanted to check it out and see the Sequoias and compare the area to the Mariposa Grove at the South entrance to Yosemite. I put Mr N in my Ergo and Daddy put E in his Ergo. (These have turned out to be the most comfortable carriers for long hikes.) We checked out the map, it said 1 mile to the first Sequoia, then another .2mi to the next Sequoia. The sign said allow 2-3 hours to walk down and back up, the change in elevation is 400 ft. We looked at each other and said, we can do it before it gets dark. There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot. We started the trail thinking it was pretty flat, that lasted maybe 1/4 of a mile, then we really started downhill. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the first Sequoia (in our not so expert opinions, it's further than one mile) and then we moved on to the 2nd tree that has a tunnel carved into it. At this point the sun was setting and it was starting to get dark. We ran into the other couple at the Tunnel Tree and they had a toddler with them. They were continuing down the trail. We made good time going back up the trail, right around 30 minutes and it was quite dark when we got to the top at 8:30. I have to wonder if the Park Rangers had to go retrieve the other couple, they didn't appear to be prepared for a night hike (or any hike really). I didn't take any pictures at Tuolumne Grove, it was much too dark when we got there to bother with lugging a camera along.

On our way home Mr N fell asleep, I carried his sweet, sleeping self to bed. I cried again as I kissed him goodnight and tucked him in, will my little baby be ok?