Almost...

Today started very early, like 4 AM early. We showed up to the Happy Isles Wilderness Center at 4:30, surprised to find that we were the only people there. The ranger told us that getting a walk up permit on a Saturday would be hard and people show up extremely early to wait in line. It turns out that six AM would have been fine, we still would have been first in line, and we would have gotten some extra sleep. It was like it was Dark Knight at the IMAX. But since the walk up was our only chance to get on the trail, it feels nice to have a pass.

We're starting in the midst of the Telegraph Hill fire which knocked out power to the park. The hype from that fire seems to have kept a lot of people out of the park, since almost everyone we've encountered has been an international traveler (who presumably planned the trip so far in advance that a fire outside the park doesn't stop their travels). Although news hype warned of a smokey valley floor, the air is clear and the weather is beautiful for our start tomorrow. And incidentally, the power is back on.

The rest of the day was spent with little backpacking errands around the valley and outside the park. We changed campsites to the backpacker campground, checked on permits for today (but the computers are still down- no sameday permits), stashed the computers at a cabin outside the park, cleared out the car and parked it, and visited cyberspace one last time. Then the most important errands of all: beer and pizza in Curry Village.

I think we're both pretty excited to get out on the trail and get started. Two nights camping on the valley floor has reacquainted us with sleeping in a tent, and now we're just anxious to get out into the wilderness. After talking to people around the backpacker camp, it seems like a lot of people are taking one or two days more than we're planning at this point, and I'm starting to second guess our planned pace. Should we have more zero days? Should we go slower? Our hard end date is based on the Outside Lands music festival in SF, so there's probably plenty of room for flexibility in our trip, although seeing Radiohead again would be most excellent. Mostly, I'm just excited to get going tomorrow morning.

We also got our first bear encounter out of the way. I guess that happens when you're camping on the valley floor. It was pretty small, not really interested in campgrounds, and just kind of looked at us and went along about its business. I guess it came to our campground later in the night, and I heard some people banging pots, but all in all it was pretty eventless for us. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same about the rest of our trip.

[Matt]