So Brian and I are back in Utah for the summer. But not before we went on another adventure, Brian decided he was sick of driving across the desert between Barstow and Las Vegas, and he had a new way to go home. I couldn't have been happier. He then told me how we were going to drive up to Yosemite National Park and stay a couple nights and hike to the top of Yosemite Falls, which is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America.

It was a sad moment as I locked the apartment, and knew I wouldn't be back for a while, but I had bear boxes and huge waterfalls to look forward too! We made our way through part of L.A. and I was secretly sad I couldn't see the Hollywood sign. We then drove by tons of grape fields, fruit trees, Happy California Cows, and even a Kraft Food Factory, where I begged and pleaded with Brian to let me stop but he said if we wanted to set up camp in the light we better keep driving.

We finally made it to Yosemite and quickly set up camp where I had my first encounter with the bear boxes!

If you look close you can see our bags in there. Well since we were moving home, I had all my shampoo's and lotions and hair stuff with me and you can't leave any of that in your car or a bear might smell it and rip open your car. So Brian made me pack a "smelly" bag with all the smelly things in it.

Here's Brian relaxing in the tent.

Here's my best impersonation of a tree hugger.

That night we had tinfoil dinners, and when we checked to see if they were done the dog next door could smell them and came over and begged for some food. We just shooed him away and enjoyed the rest of our dinner by the fire in peace. When the fire got low we decided we better clean things up and go to bed. I was over by the bear box putting things away when I looked up and saw Brian with a smile on his face, he pointed behind me and said "Bear." I just rolled my eyes at him and he was like "No BEAR" and kept pointing behind me. I finally gave in and slowly turned my head to look behind me and when I almost had my eyes on the beast, it barked at me. I let out a shriek and jumped, and then realized it was just the dog from next door, Brian about fell over laughing. Luckily there were no bear sightings the rest of the night.

The next morning we got up bright and early and packed all of our stuff in the car and headed out to Yosemite Valley.

You can see El Capitan just above my tuque. Half dome way in the back there in the middle, and Bridal Veil Falls off to my right.

Here's Yosemite falls. See the highest point that sticks up there. Well that is where Brian decided we needed to hike to. Just going to the falls wasn't a good enough hike for him.

At first I thought this hike wouldn't be to bad, I had hiked Angels Landing in Zion's twice and Brian said this would kind of be like that. Ummm no, let me give you a little info on this hike. The elevation by the time you get to the top of this thing is 6,936 feet. That's a lot! Especially when I just came from about 20 feet. We gained 2,969 feet in elevation and the round trip mileage is 9.4 miles. So that's about 4.7 miles all up hill, and 4.7 miles all downhill. People call it the mother of all stair-master workouts because if you were to climb the empire state building to the top just using the stairs, you would have to climb it twice and a little bit more to even come close to what this hike has in store for you.

Not gonna lie it was tough! I found little shaded areas where I told Brian to look for me on his way back down because I was going to crawl in there and die. He had to poke, prod, drag and even bribe me up this thing. He probably could have ran up it if he really had wanted to. But it was an amazing hike with even more amazing sights.

This is maybe half way to the top. I was a little thirsty.

This is what the last mile and something looked like. Going up wasn't so bad, I was all numb all over and couldn't feel my legs anymore, but on the way down it was like a giant slip and slide and I think I slid down half of the snow in a sliding crouch position

I made it to the top!!!(right after this picture was taken I believe I collapsed in heap on the ground!)

Brian posing proudly in front of Half-Dome

Peter even made the trip!

This is our celebratory licorice we promised ourselves when we reached the top.

Looking straight down...If you look close enough you can see our car.

If you look at the topish right hand side you can see some of the ziggy zag's we hiked up.

We had to get one of all three of us

Upper and Lower Yosemite falls

Overall it was a great hike, even though I came away hobbling. And it didn't help that at our next campsite we had to park our car at the top of a hill and walk up and down it to get our stuff. By the end of the night I was a little delirious and I kind of took a liking to the huge pine cones