Grand Yosemite

Me playing with Gracie in the bed, waiting for all the sleepy heads to get up.

For some dumb reason I thought this park was going to be like so many other parks where you cruised in an hour, checked out things from your car for about an hour, and then continued to leave within an hour which meant a 3 hour tour. Stupid me Yosemite is huge, not just huge, but huge huge. As we came in I quickly asked the ranger at the ticket booth what was the best to see in a couple of hours, he first was going to tell me to go to the Mariposa Grove which he quickly retracted, did I catch hold of that retraction, no. So we headed towards the _______ lodge, that had a living museum where supposedly people were suppose to be wandering in period clothing through these very old buildings in this village. The only thing that was really open was a horseshoeing stall. We wandered there for about 30 minutes and then we decided we were going to take the shuttle to the Mariposa Grove. I was apprehensive about this since I wasn't sure the kids would enjoy a audio tour through another set of trees. It was so informative that the kids really liked it. It was about 1 1/2 hours long so with drive time to the grove and the tour, we have now wasted a good 3 to 4 hours. I don't believe it was all waste, but I just assumed everything else was relatively close, no.

Thank goodness someone didn't convince me to take a hike through the woods instead of the tour or we would have only see the trees for that day.

The tour takes you into the trees and explains how big they get, why they are so big, how the park service takes care of the trees with controlled burns, the pine cones, almost anything you really want to know about a sequoia but were to afraid to ask. It was great.

Then we headed off to the waterfalls. Somewhere in listening I thought someone said to go to Glacier Point. Half way up to Glacier Point I realized I didn't have the time I needed to get to the real place I wanted to be at which was in the Yosemite Valley. So when we go to the first main stop along Glacier Point I went to turn around and I told the kids were going to just look out of the car and see what there was, thank goodness we did.

We turned the car around and screamed down this canyon to get onto the right road into Yosemite Valley. Once you are into the valley you soon realize how large everything is. The waterfalls, the lodging, the river, the valley. It was amazing.

It is now 6:30 and in spite of Ammie's wishes of wanting to go into Yosemite Lodge and Museum, I realized I feared for my life and the children's lives of trying to go back along a very long, narrow, two lane, windy road with a shear cliff of thousands feet down on my side, plus dodge the wildlife along the way, before dark. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to go along this road and just as we got to the end of the road 8 buck deer jumped out in front of my car. Lucky enough I had enough braking time to stop and let them go bye.

I was so tired by the time we got to dinner, all I wanted was the hotel room. It didn't take long by the time we got home around 9:30 for me to snoring the kids out of the room.