Ahhh, that school's-out-for-summer feeling

School ends.  Check.
Soccer season ends.  Check.
Violin recital caps our lessons for the summer.  Check.

SUMMER IS HERE!!!  It's that chest-expanding, clear-headed joy that comes with the end of our routine responsibilities, waking up to alarm clocks, eating on schedule and schlepping from one lesson/practice/appointment to another.

Letting no moss grow, however, we quickly started summer with a trip to Yosemite where Ed and his childhood friend, Cliff, crossed an item off their bucket list: summiting Half Dome. 

Yosemite is fantastic in June.  Granite cliffs stretch up to perfectly blue skies with views that make you forget to breathe.  Like these:

That last one's Half Dome.  Beautiful and awesome in the "I-am-struck-with-awe" kind of way.  And that's what Cliff, Ed and their friend Joe (who wanted to work on conquering his fear of heights short of jumping out of an airplane) set out to climb.

The hike to Half Dome is about 16 miles round trip, up an arduous trail that hits the summit about 8,800 feet above sea level.  It gets really hairy in the last 400 feet up the summit where hikers use metal cables to scale the rock.  I particularly liked this about the Park Service's description: "Since 1919, relatively few people have fallen and died on the cables."  

We casually speculated over dinner that some 400 people climb up the trail every day and maybe one person a year dies, from being unprepared, out of shape, careless or, say, from a lightening strike (you are, after all, on the tallest point in Yosemite Valley and hanging from a metal cable).  When the boys left at 5 the next morning, a still half-asleep Sophie did the math and warned Ed, "Daddy, be careful.  You have a 1 in 146,000 chance of dying." Gold star for our 5th grade math teacher, Aaron.

Thankfully, the guys made it up safely and quickly, reaching the summit by 9:40 when they texted us from the top!  Everyone also returned with all limbs intact, although Ed reported that the Park Ranger at the base of the dome said he had carried one person down in a body bag during his tenure.  Nice.

The pictures of their climb are spectacular:

Ants on a hill

Getting close

Up the cables

The summit!!

The girls, for their part, did 1/8th of the trek by getting to the top of Vernal Falls after a leisurely breakfast on the terrace.  It was plenty work out for us and we were graced with a double-rainbow vision on the way up the trail.

Here's a link to the rest of our travels with the Rigbys.  Looking forward to their next visit and can't wait to find out what's next on the bucket list!

On the Mist Trail

Make a wish

Double Rainbow!

With Caroline at the top