After the brewery, we walked just over a mile to the sushi spot. Super cool spot and naturally we both purchased some merch. We had previously planned sushi as our victory dinner after The Longest Day Ever but wanted to check out Mammoth Brewing so we walked there with Greg and had a beer. Gregor greeted us and I took him for a decent walk while Pete got some work done. We made it back to Mammoth just after 3 pm. Overall, Yosemite is the most impressive park I’ve ever visited, and we were hardly able to scratch the surface. We did pit stop to eat our sandwiches at the base of El Capitan which was incredible. PSA: because he’s older now (and had a REALLY BUSY day the day before), he is totally fine being alone this long, I just started feeling guilty about it. I REALLY wanted to go to Mirror Lake but at this point, it was going to be just over 9 hours of Greg being inside, so we decided to start making out way back. We took a different trail on our way back down to the trailhead and by the time we were back at the car we had covered around 8 miles. We decided to keep going to the base of Nevada Fall and the crowd of people thinned out immensely once we were past the Vernal Fall viewpoint which was great. The mist from the fall felt lovely after over a mile of steady incline. We were parked and walking to the trail head just after 9 am which felt like a huge win! We hiked to Vernal Fall, which was fun and challenging. The drive through the park was gorgeous and because we were through the main entrance by 7 am we experienced little to no traffic. We got an $11 beer (!) at The Yodler, which was the bar/restaurant at the base of the mountain. The resort was really cool, but smaller than Taos Ski Valley. After our hike, we drove up to the base of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area to check it out. Greg had a blast bunny hopping through the water to cool off mid-hike. The water in all the lakes we saw in the Mammoth area was incredibly clear. Like our Williams Lake hike in Taos, Barney Lake was nestled in in the mountains and so beautiful. The trail was a six-mile round trip out and back that took us to Barney Lake. We got to the trailhead by 9 am and had no problem finding parking. We found a great trail that was a 15-minute drive, allowed dogs and super scenic. We decided to stay in the area for day one and hike nearby. The John Muir Wilderness and Ansel Adams Wilderness are both easily accessible from Mammoth. Luckily, the Mammoth Lakes region is incredibly gorgeous and offers endless options to hike.

We were still determined to spend time in the park. However, I had not done enough research into how HUGE Yosemite is and where Yosemite Valley was in relation to our nearest park entrance… So, although we were only 35 minutes from the park entrance, we were two hours and thirty-six minutes ONE WAY to Yosemite Valley! Major foul on my part (but to be fair, the more detail-oriented person on this trip left 98% of road trip planning up to me sooo…). Yosemite was reservation only due to COVID so we were hopeful the park wouldn’t be a total zoo like Zion.

Barney waiting for santa tropid