After leaving Brian’s house, we made our way inland to Yosemite. We took the easy and delicious route for lunch, which meant a stop at In’n’Out. Since we arrived at the park in the late afternoon, all of the campgrounds in the valley (where you want to be) were full. As it turns out, they had ALL been reserved a year prior. Yosemite reservations open a year in advance and sell out within seconds for the most popular dates, minutes for others. It’s a crazy popular place. Fortunately, there were a few available sites in the Hodgdon Meadows campground just inside the park gates. We secured a site and then drove into the valley. We were immediately blown away. The size of the rock faces isn’t something one can really “get” from pictures alone; you really have to be there to appreciate the scale of things. That’s not to say we didn’t take a bunch of pictures.
While we were in the valley, we stopped at one of the campgrounds and inquired about cancelled reservations. We learned that we needed to be at the reservations office the next morning at 7am when it opened. It was a 40 minute drive from our campsite in Hodgdon Meadows. The next morning, we woke up early and sped through the park to get to the reservations office by 6:40. I was second in line, beat only by a man that looked like he had been there since 2am. Within two minutes of my arrival the line grew to six. When they opened a little while later, the ranger informed us all that there were three available sites. We were lucky to be in for the night. With our site squared away in the North Pines campground, we spent the day exploring the park and took the kids on a few short and not-so-short hikes. First up was Yosemite Falls, which is right in the middle of the valley. It was an easy walk on raised boardwalks most of the way. The upper falls are easily seen from the main road in the park; this hike took us to the lower falls, which you cannot see as well from the road.
After lunch, we decided to tackle our most ambitious hike, Vernal Falls. The falls ended up being a few miles from our campground, most of which was steeply uphill. Brooks peed through his diaper on the hike down. He was riding in a backpack on Jennifer’s back at the time, so she was soaked. I was amused. He then had a blast running down the crowded trail sans pants and seemed to love the attention from everyone that saw him. A little while later he peed through his second and final diaper. Then he pooped.
Once back at the campsite we built the bike trailer (after Brooks was cleaned up) and rode over to Mirror Lake, which isn’t a lake at all. It is a seasonal creek that is somewhat dammed up, forming a small pond part of the year. It was bone dry when we were there, which wasn’t necessarily bad, as we got to walk around the sandy creek bed. The sun was starting to go down while playing in the “lake” so we headed back, made a fire, ate dinner, and went to bed exhausted.
The morning of the 21st saw us leaving Yosemite and heading for Sequoia National Park. On our drive out of the southern gate of the park, we made the 30-minute detour to go see Glacier Point, which was well worth the additional time. It is an overlook of the Yosemite Valley from high high above the floor…and it was incredible.
