According to the Yosemite Area Rapid Transit (YART) site, the bus will be running on Labor day.   It is supposed to pick up at 7:30 on Old Mammoth and drop us at Toulome.   Well, that turned out to be a bust.    Waited an hour, no bus.   Giving up that, we tried hitching on the road out of town.   Another hour wasted.    What is the deal with these people? 

I finally gave up and called a taxi service.   It cost $160 to get our asses back to the trail.   As soon as we get dropped off a Yosemite maintenance truck pulled up and the dude shouts out to us.   It is Tito in uniform looking all respectable.   He has dreads pulled back flowing out the back of his cap.    

Small world.    It is about to get even smaller.   

Since it was almost noon by the time we got there, time for another trip to the grill a the general store.    Sitting down at the picnic table, we run into Nathan and Luna working their way through a couple 6 packs of IPA.      Turns out Nathan didn’t take that 2 week job at VVR.   Now here he is offering me a tasty IPA with my burger.    Soho ran into a German PCT’er he hiked with early on who is Northing now after skipping the Sierras.   His name is “The Other One”.    That’s a mouthful.   He is hanging with a German/American named Octane who is also headed North.   Might run into these folks again.

All this wasted 2 more hours.    Finally on the trail we walked a wide well maintained trail.   Soho found a pic of John Muir on a placard.   See the likeness ?

The trail follows the Toulome River up the canyon.   Lots of somewhat less rugged granite mountains.    There must be a lot of water running through here during the melt. 

This was impressive. 

Arrived at our camp spot around 6.   It is next to one of the rivers feeding the Toulome system.    Nice spot.    Given all the headaches getting started, 14 miles seems ok for today.