"Oh my goooosh, snooooow!!" - when we came close to Yosemite (after about 871429 hours of bus drive) we saw a not negligible amount of snow in the forest around us! It seemed to be another planet, not California. There were just some cabins around, no large buildings, no supermarket... and no signal! We had free wireless Internet access at our hostel, but I am not sure if Internet is the most important thing if you go hiking ;) I was more worried about not being able to call someone if any accident happened.
[The facts: The International Students Association of the UCSB organized a trip to the Yosemite National Park for four days leaving on Thanksgiving morning (Thursday), then there are two days of hiking in Yosemite and one day for driving back.]
After exploring and understanding the hostel (do not let children sleep on the upper bunk bed - I'll sleep at the bottom ;) ) we had a huge Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday. It seems to be that you are not supposed to be able to stand up easily afterwards. Even for vegetarians there was a lot. The dessert would have been a meal for itself (pumpkin pie, apple pie, cream).
But you should have some space for "S'mores" afterwards at the campfire! Marshmallows are melted on a wooden stick just above the fire and then stuck between two crackers and chocolate. The name "S'mores" = "I want some more" is kind of understandable ;) (If you're not too tired by the bus ride and maybe didn't have Thanksgiving Dinner beforehand)
The next morning started with an awesome warm breakfast (no muffin & coffee-style at all!) - that's probably the latest point where everybody stopped thinking about calories. But then again - 1.5 h bus tour to the hiking path in Yosemte NP.
And it was absolutely worth it! We started with the small hike and saw some beautiful nice small stream, a huge amount of snow and the motive for the characteristic Mac desktop background! At the "top" of the path we took there was a smaller, short path which led to another water fall and these falls go a few hundred of meters downwards...
This was all so impressive that we finally concluded that the modern digital technologies are so advanced that everything still seemed real.
