Mariposa - means butterfly in Spanish

Our goal was to tour Yosemite and specifically drive to Glacier Point. Looking through the AAA book for choices, we stumbled upon a town called Mariposa. We booked a room at the Mariposa Lodge which was close to Yosemite. The place was small and nice. Key point for Zac - it had a pool :-)

Fred took a different route from Pacifica to Mariposa to enjoy some nicer roads and views.

Once we all hooked up, we looked for a place for lunch. The butterfly caught my eye - The Butterfly Cafe. That's where we had lunch. It was a small place that served simple yet good/healthy meals. It reminded me of Somewhere In Time in Mystic. When we left and paid, I told the woman that the butterfly theme caught my eye. She told me that Mariposa means butterfly in Spanish. On the About Us page of the website (http://thebutterflycafe.com/about_us), it does explain a bit about the cafe and Mariposa itself. And there were plenty of butterflies in town :-)

Back at the lodge around the pool, there was a trumpet vine separating the pool area from the street. I thought it would be a perfect place for hummingbirds (at least back home anyway). I had been on the lookout for local birds to see the difference from the northeast. I didn't think I knew bird sounds as well as I did - but I HEARD the hummingbirds before I saw them! I waited and watched and soon enough, a hummingbird came to the trumpet vine :-) The sun was bright so I couldn't get a good look at his true colors so I had to watch at different times and angles. What it might be (after doing a bit of web surfing) is a black-chinned hummingbird. The sun was bright and I didn't have a camera to catch these guys.

Another funny bird, yet very clever, was the Western Scrub blue jay. He was having a feast at picking the large bugs off the front of the car grills!! He looks like a bluebird but with a longer tail and he is bigger.

We also saw the Stellar Jay back in San Jose. Really cool black rooster head more typical of the blue jays back home :-)

Along our journey, we saw a couple of woodpecker. With all these trees, this should have been an obvious find. I think we saw the Acorn woodpecker. Small but very bright red head!

Mariposa was significantly warmer than Pacifica!! One thing I thought was neat to experience was the dry heat - guess what? It's still HOT! Standing in the shade makes a big difference and when the sun goes down, temps can drop significantly (20 degrees)!

My experience in the pool was interesting to me...temps in the 90s. I got in the pool and of course the water feels cooler than the air. Okay. We swim around a bit. When I went to get out of the pool, it was very cool! Even funnier, I laid on the pool lounge...dried off in no time! It was something that struck me as a fun experiment - where in CT, it is wet heat if you are in the shade or not and if you just got out of the water, it was still humid and hot.

Finished off the first day in Mariposa with Mexican dinner. It's great to be able to walk everywhere!

Headed off to Yosemite in the morning...