Day-27: Yosemite National Park

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Well this was as close to camping, as we’ll get on this trip, everyone awakening in the woods. As with camping most were up early and by 8 AM we were all hanging around, drinking coffee, and eating whatever we could find, generally fruit, yogurt, cereal and M&M Peanuts.

(SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT COFFEE: Everyone is too accustomed to K-Cups. We had several pots of coffee that ranged anywhere from darkened water to “stick the spoon in it” strong. No complaints though as again it was kind of like camp coffee.)

Seems that our tutorial on how to operate the TV from the staff tech last night didn’t sink in. No one was able to get more than one TV channel and it wasn’t FOX or MSNBC. Fortunately, the TV tech starts early and in a few minutes he had us retrained.

Another bear drinking Cupcake SB.

Today was park day, so everyone dressed in their “explore the park” attire, well not so different from our Monterey attire I guess. By ten we were on the road into the heart of Yosemite. Once again we approached the “one-way” tunnel but were extremely lucky as our wait was quite short. Our plan was to start at the visitor center and select several hikes and sightseeing options.

At the visitor center, we watched the 30-minute familiarization movie, very nice but a creepy narrator voice; hope the National Park System used him only once. We took care of passport stamps and made a few souvenir purchases and talked with a ranger about options for “60-plussers”.

Yosemite Falls was our first objective. Shunning the easy route, a bus ride from the visitor center, we ventured forth into the wilderness, aka the sidewalk for about ¼ mile to the falls area. As expected the falls were basically dry as the 2013 snowmelt has long ago moved on down the creek.

Well by 1 PM, and after the long walk to the falls and back to the village we were so hungry. With the local deli in sight and along with hundreds of other Yosemite visitors, we stopped for lunch.

Following lunch we descended on the park market for dinner fixins’; it would be a burger and dogs night. Yes there were a few groans at the mention of hot dogs. My power of persuasion, or so I like to think, resulted in actually having meat not veggie hot dogs.

NOTE TO FILE: Grocery shopping with eight people is not advisable; there are just too many choices, e.g. rolls, would that be wheat, potato, plain, seeded or not, etc.

Following the grocery grab it was back to the cars and a short drive to the base of El Capitan. Here in addition to the magnitude of the rock itself, I think everyone gets some sort of thrill watching the rock climbers ascending the stone face of El Capitan.

We next stopped by Bridal Veil Falls and again the water falling was minimal in quantity. There’s a fairly easy walk to the base from where you can see the full length of the falls and if interested climb some rocks for a higher vantage point. One crazy thing we saw here was a woman with two very small dogs, perhaps “sausage dogs”, leashed of course. She was convinced that the dogs wanted to climb the rocks to the falls. The dogs had no way of getting any traction on the slippery rocks and in the first ten feet had fallen between small boulders several times, only to be lifted back for a retry. After park visitors began giving the woman a number of “evil eyes” and the fact that she began to hear shall I say snide remarks from the peanut gallery, she did back off and returned the dogs to her car. Perhaps you had to be there to sense the insanity of the “dog woman”.

Around 6 it was time to return to our “camp site”. Again approaching the tunnel we weren’t so lucky this time as our cars were numbers 1 & 2 in the line just after a crossing. Denny decided to inquire as to the road blockage schedule; the flagman was delighted to talk about his job and the project. We were surprised to learn that last night if we had missed the opening, we might have waited up to two hours as the transit schedule is dramatically reduced after 10 PM. As for this afternoon, our wait was about 15 minutes.

Once in the lodge, a very nice lodge I might add, we opened the wine. Seemed that no one was sure just what wine would be good with hot dogs so we had several different types, from Pinot Noir to Sauvignon Blanc. In any case the wine was good with our starter plate of cheese & crackers and sliced fruit.

Jack fired up the grill and several worked the kitchen chores doing the “prep” work, e.g. opening the dogs and burger packages, chopping onions, putting out the serving utensils and dishes, etc. It was an all-hands-on-deck operation.

Around 7:30 the dogs and cheeseburgers were off the grill, ready for consumption. Though not everyone dined on the “meat”, in the end all were satisfied with our dinner effort. Perhaps four bottles of wine had softened the palates and/or taste buds. In any case the wine, the long treks earlier in the day and our age helped signal the night would soon be over.

But hold the sheets and blankets, NCIS is on the TV. Within the group of eight there were NCIS fans. I think we made it through one episode, some watching, some dozing and some (former navy types) advising of the show’s inaccuracies. For those few not aware of the show it has something to do with the Naval (not sure what the “C” stands for) Investigative Service.

Okay, it’s now time to say goodnight!