Well, the plan was to get up at the usual time but not eat breakfast until we arrived at Tuolumne Meadows Cafe. We woke to a bitterly cold day. The water in the bottle that was in the tent annex froze so we had to assume that our water filter system had also frozen and could no longer be trusted because the microscopic holes in the filter would be enlarged. Not a good start!Then we set off to town at a good pace with hands numb despite gloves and noses red and running. There was frost by the trail and water in the muddy puddles was frozen. The sun didn’t reach us until we were almost there and we hurried into the grill to buy hot drinks and cooked breakfast.The store was open so after we had eaten we enquired about our package which we had posted here. Although it was Sunday the rumour was that a post office employee would come at noon and give out resupply packages to hikers so we had to wait around until then.Meanwhile we had more to eat and chatted to some other hikers. One of them had completed their hike and offered to give their filter to us to replace our frozen one – we gratefully accepted! There was no inside seating so we tried to find warm spots in the sun where we could thaw out. Even at midday there was a cold nip in the air.The employee we were waiting for finally arrived around 12:30 and at 12:45 we were back to the trail moving as fast as possible to make up for lost time. Soon after leaving we met two rangers who checked our permits.The trail continued to follow a river down a rocky valley, with many waterfalls.Then a gradual climb up through some natural meadows. At one point we saw a coyote slowly stalking through the grass.Another descent and we got to Return Creek by about 7pm, where we camped. All in all we did 20.1 miles, which was good considering the 4 hours spent at Tuolumne Meadows.