Day 4: Mirror Lake

I slept like a champ last night.  The air is cool, crisp and smells just like a world famous park should … so loving it here.

After breakfast, Kelly and I took Lilly for walk to Mirror Lake.   The hike is quite pedestrian in nature – gigantic trees loom overhead, creating a neat canopy effect .

Walking to Mirror Lake

A subtle bear reminder

Bikes are plentiful in the park

Mirror Lake, sans water

This time of year, Mirror Lake is bone dry, which is pretty interesting.  On the one hand, it’s a bit odd to see a lakebed completely dry knowing that in a few months time will be full, encompassing a quite large area.  On the other hand, it’s cool to see the lakebed itself.  Walking the area, one is able to see up-close how the water affects the natural surroundings.  Small rocks and giant boulders alike are very smooth to touch.  I cannot help but wonder how many of these water/no water cycles have occurred over the years, manipulating the size and texture of any item caught-up in such an occurrence.

Venturing onward, the path next brought us past an easy-to-miss collection of rock cairns.  It’s not too uncommon to come across a cairn on hiking trails, but I’ve never seen a collection quite as large as this – pretty cool.

Peaceful times in the rock cairns

Rewarding anyone taking the time to venture a bit further down the trail is the most spectacular vantage of Half Dome.  Today was the first-time I’ve seem the famous rock up-close and I was blown away.  Not to sound dramatic, but Half Dome is so impressive.  The sheer size of the face is something I cannot sufficiently describe.  Its dominance is it’s beauty – thousands of years of geology at work creating a perfect rock.  Awesome.

Half Dome

After marveling at Half Dome for some time, we needed to make our way back to the Airstream and await Chris’s arrival.

Chris arrived without incident, but not without having spent about 11 hours driving here.  We took the afternoon pretty nonchalantly – letting Chris relax, catching-up, and talking over options for our first big day hike tomorrow.