Yosemite National Park 7/17-7/18
For weeks before our trip I bugged Greg about making a plan. I didn’t need to know every single day what we were doing but I wanted to have a list of campsites in each area and look into how early things get booked in case we were out in the middle of nowhere with no service and didn’t have a place to sleep. Now, I’m fine with camping. Campsites are great but even if we were to camp in the woods with no running water or bathrooms... No big deal. I did not want to sleep on the side of the road in the car. That was all that I kept saying. BUT, because Greg is perfect, I got chastised by people. “Go with the flow, Kelly”, “It’s part of the adventure, Kelly”, “You could always sleep in the car in a Walmart parking lot”.
Let me just say that I have not seen a Wal Mart since we left Pennsylvania. And our first night in Yosemite, we had nowhere to sleep. Camping in National Parks fills up quickly and to spend the night inside the park not in a campsite requires a permit. All of the KOAs anywhere near Yosemite were full. There are no air bnbs or hotels. The “first come first serve” campsites fill up at 9am and we were driving from San Francisco. So, our first night, we did “dispersed camping” which is legal but is basically saying you can sleep in your car on the side of the road as long as you’re so far from roads, trails or water. We found a pullout in the road where a few other cars were parked and spent the night there. I was not thrilled but in that moment there was nothing we could do. I know Greg felt bad and the next night, he found us a hotel in a weird little town on the other side of the park, the only place within 2 hours that had a reservation. The next day we got up super early because we were on the side of the road and got to the park before the crowds and heat hit. All in all, we survived and one day, probably not soon, we’ll laugh about it.
Ok. On to the good stuff.
Yosemite was awesome. We drove on Monday from San Francisco to Yosemite which was only about 4 hours. We stopped along the way so Greg could get his California fix of In-and-Out Burger for lunch. By 3:30pm we were ready to go on our first hike. We picked “Mist Trail.” It was such a unique hike, taking us up the side and to the top of two water falls, the Vernal and Nevada. Along the way, the trail turned into steps due to the incline and the water from the falls soaked us because we were so close and the water was so intense. This felt great on the way up because we were it was 100 degrees. It was a little less pleasant as it got colder on the way down. The lookout at the top was beautiful and we could see right over the edge of the waterfall. It was about 8 miles round trip so we got some amazing sunset views on the way back down. We were set back a little when I left my $20.00 gas station sunglasses on a water fountain. It ended up being about half mile back in the other direction but Greg is too nice and insisted we get them because I was so excited to buy the stupid things in the first place. On the plus side - we got to see the sun setting on our way down. The sunset turned the mist from the falls red which was amazing. We returned back to the car by about 8pm and began our hunt for a place to sleep. (See above). When we got to our “dispersed camp” we planned to make a pb&J for dinner only to realize that we had left our jelly at our air bnb in Portland and so we had peanut butter on bread and went to sleep. 
After not sleeping all night I was waiting for the alarm to go off at 6:30. We got up and headed into the park for day 2. Greg and I are overly ambitious and on several occasions we plan to do a few hikes a day, but due to there only being so many hours of sunlight, it’s usually not possible. That’s what happened this day too. We wanted to do two hikes in Yosemite before driving the 4 hours to our hotel. All of the hikes in Yosemite are over 7 miles so we picked two that we had heard great reviews of that were both fairly short for Yosemite. The first hike, Four Mile Trail, was actually just short of 5 miles one way for a total of about 9.7 miles round trip. It was a switch back and a steep incline but we got to see Half Dome from several different angles as well as El Capitan. There is a shuttle that takes people to the top also but you can only see El Capitan if you hike and it was well worth it. At the top you could see Half Dome and down into the valley below as well as Yosemite Falls and the two falls we had hiked the day prior, Nevada and Vernal Falls. We hung out at the top soaking in the sun and the views thinking we could take the shuttle back down to save us some time and get us to our next hike. The shuttle didn’t go back down to the Valley where we came from. SO we started the sprint back down. It worked out because we had already seen all the amazing views. Unfortunately, there was a terrible wild fire that just broke out near Yosemite and filled the valley with smoke making the lookout very hazy and hard to see on the back side of the hike. Lucky for us that we got up so early to get some great views! By the time we got to our car it was about 3pm and the second hike we wanted to do was about 7 miles round trip and more than an hour from where we were. At that point we decided we didn’t want to risk  |
| El Capitan |
hiking in the dark and would rather get to our hotel to clean ourselves up and get ready for the drive to Zion. 
It was another 2.5 hours from the edge of Yosemite to our hotel in Tonopah, NV. The hotel happened to be a casino, restaurant, RV park and hotel all in one! It was an interesting little town to say the least.
Overall, Yosemite was a great park. It was a cool combination of the forests and waterfalls we saw in Yellowstone and Glacier. On top of that, it had incredible rock formations everywhere you looked that just make you feel so small. We also loved being able to climb right next to the waterfalls in Yosemite. There was so much left to explore there and we would have loved to have had more time. But, it’s on to Zion!
And, in case you’re wondering- People aren’t as worried about bears in Yosemite. They only have black, not grizzlies, so we took off our bear bells because people were looking at us funny. I kept my bear mace on me just in case. And although the threat of bears wasn’t as intense I had a new object of fear: Rattlesnakes. I heard them in my sleep - I swear.
On a similar note: People love squirrels. The squirrels are treated so well here that they don’t even try to get out of your way when you’re walking by. People stop to feed and take pictures of squirrels. I don’t know if it’s just a PA thing, but I’m not that impressed.
Until next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment