Warning: Rodents May Carry the Plague!

When we checked into our campground in Bishop we read the sign, thought the sign was kind of comical and overly dramatic and carried on with our $2/night camping. Our last night at the campground became a little more interesting though when I was up half the night listening to loud scratching noises all night - Ian was up the second half of the night (after I woke him up to make him listen too). At about 4:30 am when there was a hint of light in the air we bailed out of the van and started emptying out the back. Ian pulled containers out of the back and Piton and I made sure the mouse didn't escape up into the front section of the van. We finally pinned him down behind the batteries and each armed with a broom managed to scurry him out the back of the van. Whew. So we went back to sleep for a few minutes and proceeded on Yosemite that day.

On the way we stopped at Mono Lakes - it was gorgeous. There are these enormous tufa towers on this saline lake. It's far from dead however and hosted quite the diversity of bird life and had little brine shrimp that flourished in the lake. The lake is saltier than the ocean because there is no outlet, all the water in the area drains into that lake. All the water is a lot less than it used to be! Apparently the City of Los Angeles own a lot of land in the area (especially anything with water on it) and they divert the water for drinking water. Unfortunately the water level in Mono Lake dropped over 50 feet with this new "water management strategy", but a compromise has apparently been reached and the city has returned water to some of the creeks they formerly diverted completely and they have committed to raising the level of Mono Lake - not to where it used to be, but at least higher than it is now. For now though the tufa towers, deposits of calcium that formed below the water level of the lake are exposed and quite beautiful!


We headed through Tuolumne Meadows and the Tiago Pass and I started to realize what a beautiful place Yosemite is. Grand Canyon was cool - this place is spectacular.


We checked out our new campground, and settled in to spend another night in the van. As we were driving through the Park Ian gave a bit of a shout and said something touched his foot - so I assured him I couldn't see anything down by his feet when he was driving. We stopped for the night and couldn't have been in bed for five minutes before Ian shrieked again and turned on the lights. He said something touched his foot - I assured him it was likely just the moth I had seen earlier so we laid down again (pillow back over top of my head). Five or ten minutes go by and Ian gets up again and swears there is something in the car. I listen for a while with him and try to convince him there's nothing. As we sit there with the light on we can see this lump climbing up on the other side of the curtain and this awful thump as it fell off near the top. OOPS... there was something in the van and it wasn't just a moth. So for the second night in a row we were pinning down and scooting a mouse out of the van. This time though Ian used a flyswatter and I had a shoe and broom. We kept in the front area and it didn't take too much time to isolate his position and scoot him out the door. At this point it was closer to 1 am and we had a bit of adrenaline pumping.... not so good for sleeping.

We got up early anyways, checked in officially to our campsite and have been enjoying Yosemite ever since. Our friend Ara from Ohio has met up with us, and we've enjoyed two days of rock climbing with him. I'm quickly coming to understand how Ian ended up staying here a month when he intended to just "pass through" five years ago on his solo road trip.


We are looking forward to Matt, Amanda, and Jenn's arrival next week, and loving our time in Yosemite - so here's to hoping we don't really have the plague!