Okay well. We did get up at 5am but did not catch a bus at 8am. It turned out that the bus we were supposed to catch starts running in July. Perfect timing yay. So we decided to start hitching instead. Since we were a group of 10 with me, Stefi, Croco, Ann, Lorenz + the other 5 from the other tramily that Ann and Lorenz were recently hanging out with, we decided to spread out and hitch in a group of 2 or 3. At first it seemed that nobody was really interested in taking hikers down the valley which is a 1.5hour long drive but after maybe 20min a Jaguar car pulled over and a woman with a boy asked us where we are headed. When we said the valley they replied that that’s exactly where they were headed as well. We were in luck. They were so nice to stop at the main lookouts and just show us around. Moreover, we ended up having lunch together that was our treat. The least we could have done!

This was also Croco’s last stop because he only hiked the Sierra Section (previously already hiked the whole PCT) and planned on catching a flight from San Francisco. Well, guess what. The lovely people that gave us a ride would drive to San Francisco in a day or two so Croco could stay with them until then. Simply amazing. Afterwards we reunited with the others who have already made it to the valley by then and then took a shuttle to a local campground. Since all of the sites were booked out the only option was to ask someone if we can crash at theirs. I coupled up with Stefi and started asking around. Second time ended up being a charm. A lovely family from San Diego was so kind to let us camp at their site. Later they also made a fire and offered us smurfs. We chatted with them for a while and really enjoyed ourselves a lot. Yosemite Valley is definitely stunning and I don’t regret doing this side trip one bit but honestly it was the kindness people showed us along the way that made this day so much more special.