Yosemite '98 Revisited

I was at my moms yesterday and found our pictures from our first trip to Yosemite. I can't believe it had been 9 years since we had been! The first picture is with my brother and sister. We made sure to take a picture this time too. Check out how different we all look! This was the summer before my senior year of high school. The good old days......

BEFORE: Summer of '98

AFTER: Summer of '07

Yosemite Trip Recap

In a nutshell: It was a blast!

It's so great to get out of the city and appreciate our natural surroundings. Yosemite National Park is beautiful and breath taking. It was an easy drive up - only took us about 5 hours. The weather was cold, but beautiful. We did get rain the last 2 days.

Thursday:
We got in Thursday afternoon. We check in and got our camp set up and made dinner and just hung out at our camp. We stayed at the Housekeeping Camp located in Curry Village. Despite the name there is no housekeeping available. The room are basically 3 concrete walls with a sturdy tarp roof and a tarp curtain type door. And you get bunk beds and a double bed. You have a picnic table and a fire pit. The best part - electrical outlets! Definitely a luxury when camping. However, we did rough it. We only used the outlets to hang out some tube lights to add some ambiance to our little camp. I didn't sleep much that night as I was really freaked out by the thought of bears invading our camp. We were told at check-in that they had 50% more bears this year. Also, since it was near winter, the bears were becoming way more aggressive in finding food sources. This meant that there were a lot more roaming around the camps at night. So I kept waking up to every little sound the entire night. Good thing we were in bed by 9pm every night! We would get so wiped out.











Friday:
Woke up and made pancakes and made sandwiches for our lunch on the trail. We headed to the Yosemite Falls trail. A 3.5 mile trail that is a bitch to climb! We only made it a mile up to Columbia Rock, which offers amazing views of Half Dome and the valley. The trail up to Columbia Rock is a steep and strenuous switchback. My worst fears were realized as a hyperventilated twice going up this trail. I am WAY out of shape! But I knew that. We were too afraid to continue on, and the clouds were becoming darker, so we decided to head back down and back to camp. I'm sure some of the guys wanted to keep going, but they were nice enough not give me shit for slowing them down. We were all pretty wiped after the hike so we just hung out at the camp for the rest of the day. Ended the night with 2 rounds of Kings Cup before passing out [almost drunk!]. But Yosemite is magical. No one ever woke up with a hangover.









Saturday:
Had rain off and on all day. During a morning break in the rain we headed out to Mariposa Grove to see the Giant Sequoias. As we were getting ready to leave the Grove when the skies opened up and it started to pour rain and then hail. Everything turned white in about 5 seconds from all the hail. It was awesome. We headed back to our camp. After about an hour, the rain cleared and we took advantage and headed back out for a short hike. We took the free Yosemite Valley shuttle to the Mirror Lake hike [2 miles round trip]. Unfortunately, Mirror Lake is a seasonal lake and it was all dried up. So we just saw a lot of sand and a cloud covered half dome. Rained some more as we headed back to camp, and at this point we began to worry about dinner. You see we were really roughing it and did not take a propane stove or a small charcoal grill. The camp fire pit was our only source of heat and fire. Rain was literally damping our dinner plans. Luckily the rain stopped long enough to allow us to start a fire and start cooking! We actually finished cooking in the rain with umbrellas. But we made it work!








Sunday:
We were up early and packing up all our junk. We left Yosemite at 9am. Tired and dirty....we were all ready to leave. Btw - our camp had showers....but it was 2 effing cold! So 2 days without a shower isn't too bad....right? Ok....2.5 days. So gross....I know.... I felt it.

We were all extremely happy with our trip and would stay at the Housekeeping camp again. But I think next time we'll go the cabin route. :) Seriously hope we can make this a yearly trip.

Busy Bee

The day before a vacation is always the busiest. Even work decided to get in on the mix and take up some of my precious time. I mean, seriously, who actually does work at work? [insert evil laugh here]

Tomorrow we leave for our 4 day trip to Yosemite National Park ["we" as in the hubby & I, my brother, sister, her boyfriend, co-worker cousin chris, cousin tony, & my bff mario]. I am super excited to get out of town and into the wilderness. But sorta nervous too. I've camped twice before, but with experienced people, and never with my inexperienced family. That makes me the "experienced" one. Scary! Guess i'll embrace it. I'm just glad the family is finally up for some camping. We never were the camping kind. I guess our Mexican parents never really got the point. Back when I was in high school we took a family trip to Yosemite [with stops in Lake Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon]. My parents rented the biggest most awesome cabin ever. They never even gave camping a thought. Those are the kind of wilderness trips we took. In college, I had my first and second camping experience and loved it! The first was at a hot beach and the second at a cold & windy lake. Both equally fun. It was then that I began to look back and wish that our family had been the camping type. So maybe this is the beginning of something. I certainly plan to do it with my own family in the future.

Well ladies and gents, rain and possibly snow are in the forecast for our trip. Wish us luck that we don't freeze out there! Many many many pictures will be shared next week. Until then....stay cool [and warm] and dry this weekend.


SIDE NOTE
If stupid sprint decides to grace us with it's presence while in the Yosemite Valley, I will send updates to twitter, which you can read on the upper right hand corner of my blog. So feel free to check back daily to see what we're up to!