Gigi Asking Daniela

Daniela, a guest on the Pepperoni podcast, talks about her visit to Yosemite. Despite being from Texas, she always wanted to visit Yosemite and took the opportunity while being in California for college. Her boyfriend, who loves hiking, joined her. They faced challenges in planning the trip and ended up booking a hotel in Fresno. They woke up early to make it to Yosemite for sunrise and started their hike, which turned out to be a strenuous uphill climb. They passed waterfalls and enjoyed beautiful views. The hike was tiring but worth it. Daniela would do it again and wants to spend more time exploring the park. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to the Pepperoni podcast. Today we have a special guest, Daniela. Thank you for coming. Of course, hello everyone. I'm so happy to be here and I can't wait to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this. Yeah, I've been super excited to hear about your visit to Yosemite. First, let's start out with the various constraints that you talked about, about visiting Yosemite. What was the turning point that made this trip possible? Well, being from Texas, I have always wanted to visit Yosemite. And it's gorgeous. Yes, it's such a beautiful place. You always see it on Instagram or TikTok. And it's always something that you think you'll visit one day, but then you kind of know, no, you probably never will. But being a Pepperdine student, I was like, okay, I'm already in California. I live here. What a better opportunity than to go see it now while I can. And I haven't always been such like into hiking, outdoorsy, but Kenneth is super into that stuff. Oh, your boyfriend? My boyfriend is like obsessed with hiking and camping and all that. And so I'm like kind of forced to get into that stuff. Anything for him. Yes, anything for the both. So he came to visit and it was during our fall break. And I was like, we had been talking about like, oh, like, what do you want to do while you're here? And he mentioned like, oh, why don't we go to Yosemite? Like, I'll be there. Yeah. And so we kind of faced the challenges of like, well, how long are we going to stay? We don't have all the camping equipment here in California. So like, are we going to camp? Are we just going to go for a day? So it was kind of difficult like planning how long we were going to be there. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure like a lot of emotions were going through your head. Can you explain kind of like at the moment? How did you feel when you were deciding when to go or if you're planning and when you finally arrived at the park? Yeah, so we decided kind of, I'm not even going to lie, like the week before he came that we were going to go to Yosemite. I had booked our hotel in Fresno, California. So our plan was we'll spend one night in Fresno, wake up at like the butt crack of dawn the next day, drive in because I wanted to make it during sunrise. And then we're going to spend a whole day there and then drive back to Pepperdine. And mind you, it's like a five hour drive. That's crazy. So we're like, okay, we're going to do Yosemite in a day. Like this is going to, we're just going to full send. So I booked our hotel in Fresno and we drove like three and a half, four hours to Fresno. That is a long drive. It was kind of long because we left at like peak traffic hours, which wasn't like smart on our end. But we stayed in Fresno and we ended up going to bed at like 9pm because we had to wake up at five to make sure to get to Yosemite by seven for sunrise. So we woke up super early. We literally missed the continental breakfast at the hotel because it hadn't started yet. Oh, wow. That explains how early we were. We literally were like, is there any way we can get like a banana or something? So we left and then we drove into Yosemite like an hour and a half later, just in time for sunrise. Like the sun hadn't even come over the mountains yet. So I was super happy about that. And it was so freezing cold. Like that day was supposed to be like in the seventies. But that morning it was like 36 degrees. Oh, wow. I can imagine. The morning it's cold. Especially there. Yeah. But it was really nice to drive through that tunnel. It's just no words can explain. So did you get nervous as you, you know, the anticipation of driving up there? I got nervous more for like the unknown of like not knowing what to expect. Like, did we bring the right stuff? Like, am I wearing the right clothes? Yeah. So, and like, it had been my first hotel that I had ever like booked by myself. So that was also like weird. Venture outside. It gave like adult, adulting. Adulting. Oh, wow. But yeah, like it was just, I was more worried that we weren't going to have like enough water or did we bring the right food for lunch? Do we have enough snacks? Like what if one of us gets blisters? What if we fall? That's the mom in you, thinking about all that. So I was just more worried for like stuff like that. Well, I mean, how did you feel when you started the hike though? Because obviously, you know, you got to think about all those things. But now tell me about the journey of actually going from point A to point B. Well, we get there. We park. And as we're like driving in, they're doing like contained wildfires. Oh, wonderful. So they have like big, I don't know, mounds of like debris that they're like lighting on fire to do like a controlled fire thing. So we're like, oh no, like I hope this doesn't get in the way of our hike because we planned to do this hike called Misty Trail. Oh, yeah. Mist Trail or something. And thank God that was like separate from the hike we were going to do. But we start and there's a lot of people there. It's like, I don't know, maybe 8 a.m. at this point. Really? And there's a bunch of people. We're like, okay, we got to get started. Like everyone's starting now. So we are in the hike for maybe five minutes. Automatically, it starts going uphill. Oh, no. I was like, you've got to be joking. So we're like huffing and puffing for a good like 15 minutes just straight uphill. We get to a point, I'm like, okay, I need to take a break. Let's sit down for one second. That's funny. Then we look on the map. We didn't realize the whole thing is an upward hike for three hours. You're just going up the whole time. That's the best workout of my life. Literally best workout of my life. Wow. So you pass like two huge waterfalls. Oh, my goodness. That sounds gorgeous. It was so beautiful. So many great picture opportunities. I also took my camera, so we were constantly stopping. I was like, babe, let's take a picture together. I mean, you have to. I know. This is the first time you're going to do it. Exactly. Literally my thought process. So we took a bunch of pictures, and then once you get to the very top, like three hours later, I was like, okay, we have to have lunch. I'm literally starving. So we just popped a squat down a rock, and we both got sandwiches at a grocery store. And you're looking over the whole valley. Once you're at the top, there's a stream. I was going to ask at least if you have a good view. Yes, it was the prettiest view for lunch. I couldn't have asked for a better spot. So it was really nice. Oh, how romantic. Yeah. We both didn't smell the best. You know, I'm sure you're at that point in your relationship anyway. Yeah, yeah. So it was cute. And then the rest is downhill, but it takes a good like two hours to get down. That's a good quad workout. Yeah, I have never felt so much pain in my leg. Oh, what about your feet? One is to literally fall off. Oh. So how many miles was it, do you know? So the whole thing I think was like, okay, this doesn't sound like a lot, but like going up. Yeah, yeah. The whole thing was like from beginning to all the way at the end was maybe like five miles. That's a lot. I can't, you know, like I can't run more than four miles per hour on like an 18-minute climb. And that's like sprinting. Sprinting, so I know what you mean. Yes. That's insane. So did Pepperdine not prepare you all with the steps and the incline? No, I mean, I thought like, oh, because there was this one point where there was like literally, it felt like straight upstairs and there was like the tiniest little rail. And on the other side of the rail, it was like it just dropped off. No way. And I was like, okay, like I can do this. I'm used to stairs. Oh my. Pepperdine did not prepare my calves. No, Pepperdine, you're so better on that. I know, for real. Wow. Well, this sounds like a crazy journey for you, I have to say. Would you do it again? That's the real question. A hundred percent, I would do it again. But I told him that the next time we go back, like I definitely want to spend a couple days at the park. Because like one day, there's just not enough time to see everything. Exactly. We saw El Capitan, but we didn't see, why are they blinking on the, there's another big, really big rock. What? Half Dome. Oh. So Half Dome is like the big, big rock. We didn't get to see that. So now you have a reason to go back? We have a reason to go back. But I would definitely do it again. You know, ever since I got my MacBook with the Yosemite background on it, I've always been inspired. But I think this was just the last push that I needed. Good. You need to go, girl. Well, I think that wraps it up today for the Pepperoni Podcast. Yay. Thank you for coming in, Daniela, and I hope you enjoyed your day. Of course. Thank you.