For day 3 our destination would be Elizabeth Lake and then back to the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and a swimming pool with a view of Unicorn Peak.
We got to the trail head and found a mobile bear trap. There had been some sightings of a two year bear roaming the campgrounds in the evening and the Rangers had set up trap to move him out of the area. The effort had not been successful, the bear took the bait outside the trap, but didn’t get into it. Lucky for us none of our scouts tried to crawl into it 😉
The boys continued working on their Forestry merit badge. We saw a Mountain Hemlock Fir, saw more Lodge Pole Pines and many small flowers. Ask to see your scouts notebook on all the flowers that we saw.
The first days hike was a good warm up and it didn’t seem like it took too long to get to Elizabeth Lake. We then hiked about 3/4 around the lake and stopped for some lunch. Dan noticed a tree we had not seen before and Dr Bryon introduced us to the White Bark Pine. These are typically the trees that are found at the highest elevations. For more info: click here.
After lunch we headed back down the hill towards Yosemite Lodge. Once we got down mountain, we stopped at the Tuolumne River for a quick swim. Dr. Laura realized she had lost her lens cap for her camera. Her and I were going to hike back to our last stop to find it. Just as we started back we ran into a small group of people and we asked them if they had seen the cap, and to our surprise they had and one of them then pulled the cap out of their pocket and gave it to Laura. We were very grateful.
Our next stop was the Tuolomne Lodge, most of the boys got an ice cream and we all spent a few minutes enjoying that simple pleasure. Christine also realized there were warm showers here and would eventually sneek back here once or twice when the dirt and grime got to be too much to bear.
A few minutes from the Lodge we stopped at the Unicorn View swimming hole. The view lived up to its name. Everyone seemed to have a good time as we had nearly completed the hike and it was just a short hike back to the camp. The park allows guests to gather wood for camp fires so Karl and I grabbed some on the way back and the boys would chop it up and use it during the evening camp fire.
The day wrapped up with most everyone enjoying a bag of Mountain House dinner.
