"You mean you left your wife here overnight in a sleeping bag?"

No, not me. Don't worry!

So we arrived in Yosemite National Park on Saturday morning around 6am and headed intuitively (we didn't really check out the signs, but Drew just manages to always find himself in the right place - it's a little scary) to the Park Ranger's office. Once there we found ourselves about 8th in line for a trailhead permit. Or we thought we were 8th in line, until we found out that the very first two people in line were actually going for 8 permits each. Awesome...not. That should be a rule, you have to be present to pick up your permit, people!

The first woman in line was in a sleeping bag, mid-40's, and we soon found out (when her husband arrived freshly shaven with hot coffee) that she had spent the night there. Alone. He left his wife in a sleeping bag at 3am and went and found himself a nice cozy hotel bed!! Geez... Tough cookie! She got the first permits of the morning, all 8 of them, and headed out. I suppose she deserved them after that performance.

The second pair in sleeping bags (of girls, again! what is this!?) were trying for 8 more permits out of Happy Isles, the most popular trailhead leading out from the valley. They were out of luck as the first woman had snagged the first 8, and there are only 12 per day. Lucky for us, since we were trying for Happy Isles, too. They headed out to Glacier Point to keep their group intact and we were that much closer to our permit...

Inside the Ranger station we were divided into two lines, those who had permit reservations and those who were picking up last minute, first-come, first-serve permits. We stealthily snuck over to the "I already reserved a permit" line since, hey, we had one, at first! The head ranger gave us the thumbs up. So, one step closer to our trailhead, we inched up in line until we were finally HOVERING over the guy in front of us to make our point. WE NEED THIS PERMIT BEFORE THOSE PEOPLE OVER THERE! It worked - maybe the head ranger took pity on us. He stepped in to "ease the line" and took us next (as the ranger next to us was getting an earful from a very rude woman - I hate to call her a hiker with that kind of ungrateful attitude!). We got the last two permits out of Happy Isles. All those behind us had to head out elsewhere. Success! Oh, and can we rent a bear canister, please!?

Whew. We walked out and realized that both of us had more or less been holding our breath, and that our hearts were going a mile a minute. You had to be there to understand...but it just felt like things were going our way. Karma, baby.