Alysa and I have been talking about Yosemite for the last 7 years. The opportunity to go presented itself and we took advantage of it. I managed to get us a tent cabin at Curry Village for a night, followed by two nights at the neighboring Upper Pines Campground. This post will focus mainly on our stay at old Camp Curry.
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| Stretching the legs after a long day of driving. |
Alysa, our 10 month old Remington and I left Riverside around 8:30am and drove through pretty much every landscape Southern California has to offer (except for the coast). We stopped for lunch in Fresno and finally made it into Yosemite around 4:00pm. I felt so excited anticipating the Tunnel View. After the hour long drive through the southern part of the park we finally reached the tunnel. It was a long... dark... but at the end... a light. Exiting the darkness to a view of the valley is such an amazing contrast. In my own opinion Tunnel View is, by itself, worth the long, mostly boring drive with an intermittently cranky infant. It had been so long since I had been to that spot and I guess I had forgotten how wonderful the view is.
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| Tunnel View at its finest. |
We sat on the deck of the pizza bar on the side of the lodge and enjoyed a pretty good dinner. But even better was the view of the valley walls. All of that rock standing against a sky of blue dotted with fluffy, white clouds. Trees permitting, Half Dome is very easily seen towering above the camp. Best dinner time view I've had in a good while. I pointed out the slabs of granite on the massive walls around us and told Lys a story I had heard about a big plate of rock breaking off to come crashing on the valley floor beneath obliterating what ever it hit. She was not amused. We walked Remington around the camp and read some of the interpretive signs... I pointed out some house sized chunks of rock that looked like they had once resided on the side of the rock wall of glacier point some thousand feet above... Then we made our way back to the tent cabin since it was getting dark.
Getting Rem down was a little bit trickier than usual. He had
slept so much in the car that sleeping seemed the furthest thing from
his mind. We played with him though until he started getting drowsy and
by 8:00pm both he and Lys were out. I stayed up for another hour doing
my stretches and reading a bit. I laid down around 9:00pm and was soon
asleep... the busy day was over and it was time for a night of rest
before starting fresh in the morning. NOT!!!
I woke up delirious to Alysa shaking me but her voice sounded muffled in all of the noise. It was loud all around us, very loud. A mess of rumbling and crashing sounds. It felt as if the air was shaking. At least to my half awake mind. Alysa was terrified and all I could make out of her was "The rocks are falling... the rocks are falling". I told her everything was okay and I made my way for the door. When I opened it I was greeted with a flash of bright light which silhouetted the trees in front of me. A loud rumbling followed. I started laughing and told Alysa what was going on. Going to sleep at this point was not an option though. We needed to find a restroom and with it being the middle of the night the restroom was to be a family affair. We bundled up since it was cold and we made our way to the nearest bathroom which was closed for cleaning. It started to barely sprinkle. We made our way across the camp towards another restroom. The lightning and thunder continued. We made it to the restroom only to discover that we needed a code to get in. The code was all the way back on the tent cabin. As we made our way back to our tent cabin yet to be relieved the rain began to come down and Rem began to shiver. By the time we reached the tent cabin Lys and I were wet, but our little boy was dry thanks to the fact that I was wearing my old fat winter jacket. We didn't even care about our bladders anymore and good thing because it RAINED for the rest of the night. Really rained. We got out of our wet clothes and into dry ones, cuddled up with Rem between us and laughed at how we couldn't hear each other talk. The noise as loud as it was lulled us and our wide-eyed little boy back to sleep.
By morning the rain had stopped so we made our way to the lodge's coffee bar and enjoyed a little breakfast. Our short stay at Curry Village ended with me lugging everything back to the car just to load it and soon unload it at our next campsite at Upper Pines Campground which was no more than a half-mile away. Fortunately, I remembered to use Remington's stroller in a more practical fashion and saved my self the extra tiring trips between the tent cabin and the car.
It really is a nice place and I think I would enjoy it better if we stayed there longer. There were multiple housing options, nice bathrooms with hot showers, and a store with a gift shop is stocked well with essentials. There are a couple good eating options and a nice clubhouse with wi-fi. But I was in Yosemite and I didn't drive all the way there to sit in doors and enjoy all the comforts of home.
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| Tunnel View made even grander! |
We sat on the deck of the pizza bar on the side of the lodge and enjoyed a pretty good dinner. But even better was the view of the valley walls. All of that rock standing against a sky of blue dotted with fluffy, white clouds. Trees permitting, Half Dome is very easily seen towering above the camp. Best dinner time view I've had in a good while. I pointed out the slabs of granite on the massive walls around us and told Lys a story I had heard about a big plate of rock breaking off to come crashing on the valley floor beneath obliterating what ever it hit. She was not amused. We walked Remington around the camp and read some of the interpretive signs... I pointed out some house sized chunks of rock that looked like they had once resided on the side of the rock wall of glacier point some thousand feet above... Then we made our way back to the tent cabin since it was getting dark.
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