Since neither of the younger two nor I were up for an 11.5 miler, we started at the Mist trail base and went up as far as I felt comfortable doing with a 3 year old in tow. We ended up hiking about to the top of Vernal Falls, which is a 3 mile hike. Seth loved the rocks and Evelyn loved having mom time. They loved that the squirrels weren't afraid of people and would follow Seth especially just hoping for him to drop something to eat. One thing that we've learned is that the signs are not marked with the right mileage for each of the trails. The Panorama trail was supposed to be 8 miles and was 11.5... El Capitan was supposed to be 3 miles away from the top of Yosemite falls and ended up being 5 miles away and 5 miles back. We started asking if things were in miles or in Yosemite miles. It was a lovely hike and we did the steep uphill part while it was all shady. I even made friends with a couple from the Broncs and Pikipsy. The kids very willingly got out their rain coats to keep from getting too wet on the trail and wouldn't take them off even on the way down. Seth kept saying that he was like Superman but a boy. We got in trouble for peeing on the side of the tail instead of hiking 100 yards away from the trail and digging a 6 inch hole to bury a 3 year old's pee. We made it part of the way up the stone stairs by Vernal Falls. It was gorgeous. I decided to turn around when some of the stone steps were a little too big for the 3 year old to step up and he'd try to go around them near the edge of the cliff. I called that good and we went back down to the base. We took the shuttle to the van and Seth fell asleep as soon as he was sitting. Evelyn and I read and then we picked up our very tired hikers from the Panorama trail hike to take them back to camp. The valley where we did all the hiking is an hour drive from our camp, so it was a very exciting thing to get back and forth every day.
This is at the Yosemite Falls bridge, almost a mile up the mountain.
Evelyn got into maps and compasses. She figured out pretty quick how to read a compass and tell me which way we were going. It was super cute.
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