Rainbows, Waterfalls and Headlines

I've enjoyed the return to California and to Yosemite, it has only been about 4 days but I will always remember this scenery. Tomorrow I head back to the glorious dustbowl that is Nevada, that is if the journey is possible with major road closures
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This is a photo of Vernal Falls in Yosemite . It was a super hard hike for someone who has been sedentry and mainly studying for the last few months. It was marked as strenous and the last part is 600 steps and a 300ft climb but I was up for the challenge. Mr H told me he didn't want to do it but in the end he did and I think he appreciated the views from the top. When I saw people stretching their calves before the climb my inner voice did a "tut tut", really, why do people need to take things so seriously??? How wrong was I? The degree of incline was annoying on my calves to say the least. I eneded up doing the first third of the climb on my toes as doing it flatfooted was uncomfy. My barefoot runners are a few years old now, they are like climbing pumps, decent grip, light but you feel every rock. I was so pleased I made it!

If you look closely you can see the falls form a rainbow at the bottom and there is a person (small white dot) under the rainbow to the left of the picture to show the scale. This is taken about 2/3 of the way up. It was a tiring but amazing climb and I took loads of photos. The park was sadly heaving with people today so decided to leave at about 3pm before the rush. On the way back a big fire had broken out closing roads. Fire crews were all over the place and I suddenly ended up in a disaster zone. The fire has now spread to 700 acres I am told. I was standing by the side of the road getting blown about by the helicopters (3 of them) as they came down from the fire which was about 50-100 meters above my head on scrub land. The helicopters from Cal-Fire took it in turns dipping into the river on the other side of the road to where I was standing, filling a large red fabric type bucket with water and then flying back overhead to dump this on the fire. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The fire spread so quickly, the helicopter crew seemed to be working so hard but fighting a losing battle. . .