After Tuolumne, we were a party of three again, Daisy, Tinkle, and I. The morning that we left, Piglet caught up to us! We chatted for a bit and found out both of our boyfriends were coming to South Lake Tahoe in early July. She was staying there for a little while, so we left and got back on trail. We soon passed a soda spring, where carbonated water bubbles up from underground. We tried it and it was like drinking metal flavored soda, but somehow, it wasn’t terrible! Yosemite was really cool, with large waterfalls and boulders. The ranger presence in the park was higher than anywhere else thus far. Our permits and bear canisters were checked for the first time! We also saw a guy get escorted out of the park because he tried to sneak through without a bear canister. The ranger was telling us that it only takes one time eating human food for a bear to become hooked on the sugar. There’s a huge focus on keeping bears and humans safe from each other. Speaking of hooked on sugar, I discovered PopTarts as a great, high-calorie snack. That, Velveeta, and a pepperoni and cheese wrap revamped my resupply for this section. I was getting tired of tuna, no matter how many different flavors they had available.

I also discovered a new trick to crossing streams- taking off my pants! I found that my shorts fit over my shoes easily. No pants, no problem. At another water crossing that evening, there was a difficult part where we had to lunge over the rushing water from one rock to another. We all made it okay, but a guy right behind us fell in and Daisy and I had to run in and help him up. I’m immensely grateful that I always had Daisy and Tinkle in the Sierras for these moments.

My sleeping pad had been giving me issues for the last week or so. I was waking up on the ground and having to blow it up again more and more times per night. During lunch one day, I dunked it in a creek and found the hole, which I hastily patched. That night, I wasn’t kept up by that, but by a strange grunting or growling noise that I’d convince myself was totally fine and had definitely gone away. Then it came back and before I could think too much about it, I put on my shoes and got up to look around, heart pounding in my chest and wondering what I thought I was doing. There wasn’t any bear or anything nearby, so I eventually went back to sleep. The next day, a German couple who’d camped nearby us said they’d heard the noise, too. They looked and saw a lot of deer tracks, but no bear. I only felt a little foolish for being freaked out by a lusty deer, but oh well.

The next day, I started a “Day in the Life” video, which does a better job of describing scenery and such than I can in writing. Expect to see that soon!