John Muir, National Parks advocate and nature lover, needed to steal adventure-lover Theodore Roosevelt from the boring scheduled dinners and speeches and show him the real Yosemite.
Yosemite was in danger of being mined out, overrun with logging camps and used for sheep herding.
Yosemite's great protector, John Muir, wouldn't stand for this kind of treatment of one of the most beautiful places on Earth and was prepared to take drastic measures to show the president what fun a little wilderness is. It wasn't tough to convince Teddy Roosevelt to play along.
The party the president traveled with continued on after resting, assuming he was in the front car. When the caravan was out of sight, Muir and Roosevelt came out of hiding and camped along the Glacier Point trail for a few days, enjoying camp fires and porterhouse steaks.
When the president finally returned, he made it his personal mission to set aside vast reserves of protected forests and double the amount of National Parks. Mission accomplished!
