Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 25, 2005

Yosemite National Park, CA
After a fairly quiet night of camping, we set out with the sunrise for Yosemite National Park. I was so excited to finally be in my home state of California. Every day was bringing me closer and closer to home, family, and friends. It was with these thoughts that I began our 80-mile day of biking. Immediately after exiting the campground in Benton, we were faced with some steep climbing, which was painful to my swollen knees. At the end of the past few days, I had been icing them and rubbing them down with Bengay, all in the hopes of relieving some of the pain. To take my mind off my knees, I motivated myself with the thoughts of home, and I knew that we would soon be treated to the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas and the familiar sights of Yosemite. Soon the hardest climbing was over, and Weijie, Trang, and I coasted into the first water break.

For a while after, we biked over rolling hills, which I (and my knees) loved a lot more than the climbs. I began to recognize some of the scenery from past family vacations, and it was comforting to see some of the flora and fauna that I had learned about during my school trips to the Sierra Nevadas in fifth and sixth grade. I am so amused that I can remember the names of the trees and plants that I learned during those couple of weeks, but I have no idea what we learned in the classroom during those two years.

Later in the afternoon, we began to see signs for Tioga Pass and the park entrance, and after a quick stop at a gift shop, we were ready to face our last major climb of the summer. I found myself looking forward to the challenge instead of dreading it. To make the climb even better, we were treated to the sight of colorful flowers in orange, yellow, and purple that were sprouting on the sides of the mountains. We also stopped frequently to take pictures of the waterfalls that cascaded down the surrounding mountains.

Trang and I were pleasantly surprised when the climb turned out to be shorter and easier than we expected, and it turned out Weijie had not lied about the climb not being too bad. We walked into the lodge where we were to wait to be shuttled the last couple of miles into the park. The three of us had a craving for cheese fries, but when we walked into the lodge’s restaurant to ask if they could make some for us, we were told that they don’t fry anything. That was the moment I realized that I was truly back home in my health-conscious state of California, and I couldn’t help but smile. Instead, the three of us decided to share two big scoops of ice cream to reward ourselves for conquering Tioga Pass.

After being shuttled into the park, we biked downhill to our campground in Tuolumne Meadows and settled into our sites. I remember being disappointed when Nisha told us that there weren’t any showers available, but I got over it soon enough. That night, Steve was kind enough to organize some hikes into Yosemite Valley for our day off, including the 17-mile hike to Half Dome. Steve made lists of people who wanted to do the different hikes, and we discovered that six of us were crazy enough to want to do Half Dome on what was supposed to be our day of rest and relaxation, and I happened to be one of them, despite my throbbing pair of knees.

--Jessica DeLeon