Campsites at Yosemite are, so I've heard, hard to come by if one does not plan early in advance and register at the exact time that registration opens, which is on the 15th of every month, 5 months in advance to desired camping dates. Needless to say, we are not that organized to plan so far in advance.
So when one of Ryan's climbing friends had a week long reservation that he could only use a part of, we shuffled our schedules so that we could join him and use the rest of the reservation days.. cause, after all, it's YOSEMITE!
I have lots of fond memories of Yosemite.. from my first multi-day, back-packing trip hiking a portion of the John Muir trail from Toulumne Meadows to the Valley... or the time I join my college pals, Christina and Sam, to hike Half Dome. Ryan has many memories there too, climbing routes at the base of El Capitan with Bill, and describing aspects of the climb on Lost Arrow Spire.
The kids' teachers gave us homework assignments for the kids to work on for the week, which I had Emilia work on every morning prior to getting out of the tent. The kids also learned about aspects of Yosemite - how the valley was created through glaciers. How waterfalls are formed; And of course, lessons on bears. Ask them how to differentiate between a black and brown bear, aka grizzly bears. Re-occurring theme was to respect nature and its beauty and force by being responsible humans.
This is the kids first time at seeing waterfalls. (Liam is wearing his secret agent spy glasses.)
This is the Yosemite Valley view as you drive through the Wawona Tunnel, heading into the valley.
It wasn't quite peak season yet, but the huge crowds of cars and people was crazy. Took us 2 hours to get from the tunnel to the valley!
Here at last! A deer hanging in the meadows by Camp Curry (aka most recently re-named as Half Dome Village).
Emilia and Violet became fast friends.
Emilia liked this tree-trunk chair...
And she wanted a photo of this heart-shaped rock...
Our campsite was at Upper Pines Campgrounds, which is a skip and a walk away from Half Dome (aka former Curry) Village. We hung out at the Pavilion quite a lot on this trip. Dinner every night at the Pavilion and the first couple days we hung out there instead of the campsite since it was raining on-off.
The Pavilion bear. It's okay to pet this one.. NOT a real one.
Hanging out with our friends at the campsite... kids having a kiddie glowstick dance party.
Day 2 --> Kids Top-Roping at Camp 4
Weather forecast called for rains the next two days. Luckily it hadn't started yet, so we were able to make our way over to Camp 4 and set up top rope for the kids to climb. Camp 4 is a walk-in only campsite which is situated near a bunch of bouldering problems.
Liam was pretty eager to climb; He went up first and also climbed it twice.
Every one coming down from the down climb.
Around the corner were a bunch of other climbers on different routes. We were going to set up a 2nd top rope for the kids, but the on-off rain showers had begun.
We were able to hang out with Andy and Violet for 2 days before they had to leave. Kids had lots of fun despite the weather. They collected pine cones and branches to create a nature shop. Then they asked us if we wanted to visit their nature shop and charged us 10 cents. This time, they got smart and asked for a real dime.. none of this pretend money anymore. =)
The on-off rain was nice to us. It stopped enough to have a campfire and give the kids some Smores time.
To be continued... Yosemite : Part II
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment