Why I skipped Water Polo Practice for Two Days...

Wow! It certainly has been a long time since I last posted A long week hasn't it? Boy I just love this record breaking heat right now. Yesterday in Modesto it was 110 degrees! Man I could not have been any more happy, except for the fact that everybody around uses A.C which makes me rather cold! Enough of that though! So you may ask why I've skipped TWO water polo practices in a row? Well it all started like this.
Once upon a time last week Mom and Becca wanted to go to Yosemite. Mom wanted to beat the heat, Becca had never been up to Yosemite and wanted to see it for herself. So we left early Monday morning. I was up by 7 o'clock a.m. or something like that and I was the last person up! Sunday night Becca and Ryan had packed us some sandwiches made from square bagels which might I add were delicious but that's coming from a guy who ate mainly sandwiches for school lunches seven years in a row. Anyway, so after we were done packing and after we said a prayer for safety, we were off! The trip up to Yosemite was uneventful and I got Shotgun while playing Fire Emblem on my Gameboy Advanced AND listening to a book on tape. That was very neat! Becca wanted to sleep but Mom warned her that the way up to Yosemite was full of twists and that it wasn't an easy ride. Regardless of this warning Becca slept almost the whole way up with Ryan covering her eyes (to keep the sun out).
So finally we got there, I at this point wanted out because I was freezing from all of the air conditioning plus I wanted to stretch my legs. I don't know exactly where in Yosemite we stopped but I remember a Ranger and bathrooms and me pacing around, furious that we weren't going to walk all the way to the Vernal/Nevada Falls from where we were at, which was about 20 miles or so away from that which I thought wasn't that bad for a good ole hike. Of course the guy who opposed this idea was Ryan himself who, if I might be so bold could've used the hike to get in shape more.
So anyway we got back in the car and Mom drove into some parking lot and found a spot with shade and packed everything into our "Boothe Bag" as I like to call it because that was the same pack we had used for our church history tour. I volunteered to hold it since it really isn't that heavy at all. Our first stop was the Bridleval which was pretty cool. Oh I forgot, on the way to Bridleval we stopped and Becca took some pictures of Yosemite's scenery. We were pretty high up and could see the Bridleval. As I was saying earlier, I carried the "Boothe Bag" around and we hiked the short distance up to the Bridleval and Presto! The Bridleval was there and boy was it something to take in! Becca took some neat pictures of it, but since we were so far away, Becca and I hiked up some big rocks, (sorry I can't be more specific I don't know what kind of rocks they were, but they weren't granite) and got up pretty darn close and Becca started taking pictures. The best pictures of course had me in them but I thought that I took a nice picture of Becca as well.
When we got down we headed towards the car and we were debating whether or not we should have lunch because it was 11-12 o'clock and we were getting hungry plus Mom, Ryan, and Becca were getting hot already. The thing about Yosemite is that there's not that much traffic and there's plenty of space to just pull over and take pictures of the beautiful scenery, which was what Becca did as we were coming to the place.
After much debating we had lunch by a river. We all took off our shoes and socks and dipped our feet into the heat sucking river. Yeah the water up there was pretty darn cold and if you stuck your foot in for long enough, it went pretty close to numb, which is what happened to me.
As Mom was eating her sandwich a blue jay landed on a rock not far from hers. Having still remembered that encounter with the seagull Mom sort of put the sandwich close to her but the blue jay wasn't interested anyway and it flew off. By that time Ryan was eating an apple but he lost interest and seeing a squirrel nearby purposefully laid an apple on rock farther from ours. The squirrel seemed pretty interested and all of us, except for Becca, were watching in interest as the squirrel was sniffing the apple. Then in a split second the squirrel grabbed the apple with it's mouth and started running away with it. It was funny watching the squirrel run away with the apple because the apple was half the squirrel's size, even with Ryan eating less than a quarter of it. Becca was disappointed in having missed the squirrel.
So after we were done with lunch we got back in the car and kept on driving till Mom parked the car. We were interested in Hiking up Vernal/Nevada Falls but as I heard from Mom, Ryan had voiced some concerned but he ad Becca were good troopers who went with us anyway. Of course nobody knew where exactly the Falls were and even though I had been to Vernal/Nevada Falls 3 times previously, I had temporarily forgotten. Mom insisted that we go backwards thinking that there was some hidden road but I had seen a sign that said the Misty Trail (which is the trail used to hike up to the Falls) was the forward direction and then it all came back to me. Duh, the sign leading to the trail was right in front of our noses! I obviously pointed this out to everyone else but of course nobody listens to a 15 year old especially when they're right. Silly Mother had to ask a Ranger who said the same thing I did. So the moral of this story is: Listen to me whenever I'm pointing out something that should be obvious.
As the hike commenced I seemed to notice that I was dusting everybody and soon they were out of sight. This got frustrating because I was SOOOOOO far ahead and I was hardly braking a sweat, (Actually I was sweating quite a bit but hey it was 102 degrees up there, talk about beating the heat huh?) while Mom, Ryan, and Becca were a super long distance away. Surprisingly Mom kept up and was doing very, very well. Kudos to her, she's the one that had a bad foot. (which has healed a lot this past few years,) So finally I decided to wait for the rest of my family to catch up. After getting a big break Ryan and Becca decided to keep venturing out with us all the way to the top of the Falls. I tried to slow down and enjoy the scenery but I just couldn't do it and once again I started dusting everyone but I kept Mom in view just in case there would be a change in plans.
My favorite part about the Vernal/Nevada Falls is the Misty Trail. It feels GREAT getting drenched by Mist and I heard that it had 700 steps. I made it up those 700 steps rather easily with Mom a long distance away thinking that this wasn't going to be a good idea but she made it all the way 12 minutes or so after me. Now after you've climbed the staircase, there's a downhill slab of granite with railways there and it's neat watching the roar of the Falls. Mom and I waited a long while before Ryan and Becca came up. After taking more pictures we got down, me acting triumphant because that had been my fourth time hiking the Falls and by far the most fun.
By then we were tired and all wanted to go home and so after buying souveneirs to remember the trip we headed for home. As we were coming home, the car started heating up and Mom had to put on her flashers and we pulled over, just to let the car cool down. It was about half an hour before we tried going back into the car but we had to the same thing eventually. I was getting rather scared at the fact that the car wasn't working. Mom, Ryan, and Becca came to the conclusion that the car needed coolant. So Mom decided to give the car an hour or so and we ate ate stopped and ate at a restaurant. The food was okay despite the fact that my 13 dollar lasagna wasn't that big at all.
It was getting late and Mom was trying to find a store with coolant, but came to no success. She tried calling Aunt Carrie, Grandma Barbara, and Brother Wilkingson but that idea didn't work (She was hoping that they could come up here and get us) so Ryan and Becca proposed that we stay in a motel. The room we got was decent despite it's shabby outward appearance and on Tuesday morning Mom and Ryan got a potty-mouthed cowboy to fix the raidator cap and soon we were on the road back home. Well that's our Yosemite trip for you hope you enjoy the pictures!