Family Vacation, Part 7 - Yosemite

Here we are, still vacationing!!! I really don't feel like I have a lot to share tonight, even though we saw some of the most breathtaking scenery in the whole world today. For starters, words can't express the WOW of what we saw. Secondly, we are re-e-e-e-e-eally wearing down here! Ha! I feel like I'm running out of steam, even with the blogging. We're moving a little slower each day and making fewer tracks, it seems. The kids are getting a little edgy with each other and getting "the look" a little more frequently. Don't get me wrong--we're still having a GREAT time. You can just tell that we're coming to the end and everybody will be ready to be home when the time comes. Until then we're still trying to pack in as much as we possibly can. :-)

The biggest excitement of the morning was Joe's fear of missing breakfast. This whole family sits around waiting on that kid ALL THE TIME. He's our lagger. Everybody else is already in the van and he'll start to walk out the door and then realize he doesn't have any shoes on. And he doesn't know where they are. And then the laces are knotted and he can't get them untied. Then he has to take that one off again and pull the tongue up because Dad says to always do that. And on and on and on. Well, when there's a continental breakfast involved and he can see the clock ticking he gets a little panicky. Makes the rest of us want to just SLAP him! Ha! See what I mean about getting edgy with each other! ;-) Joe did, indeed, get his breakfast. I opted to stay behind and let James take the kids to breakfast. I needed to blow dry my hair and repack the suitcases. We are now down to just TWO suitcases. That will be nice. :-)
We left this morning and drove down through Sacramento, listening to Governor Schwarzenegger all the while. Ha! We have several voice options on our GPS. We usually keep it set on Sean Connery, but it seemed fitting to have "Arnie" guide us since we're in his state. Actually, we've made most of this trip purely by map--good, old fashioned, paper map--and have only used the GPS a few times. Anyway, we hit Highway 49 and headed south. I had read that Highway 49 is a great drive filled with lots of historical cites and little towns left over from the Gold Rush. We weren't impressed. We missed a road that said "Gold Rush Road -- Old Highway 49," so I'm assuming that's where all the good stuff was. Besides that, the roads were absolutely exploding with cars and MOSTLY motorcycles. Must've been having some sort of biker convention or something. It was crazy.
We did, however, see a sign that said "Mark Twain Cabin, One Mile" so we swerved to take the road and go see it. (We needed something interesting to look at other that bikers!) After we turned it occurred to me. "Wait a minute... Mark Twain wasn't from California!" It seemed weird to me but peeked my interest. When we got there, we found this little cabin with a plaque out front. It explained that Mark Twain visited that county at some point... So after he became famous they built this cabin and put a sign up so people would come see it, I guess! HA! Pitiful. I guess he had been impressed with some things he'd seen around there (like the frog jumping competitions--which we would have LOVED to have seen) and it influenced him and some of those things ended up in some of his writings. Or something like that. It was really lame.
But it gave the kids something to do! It said the cabin was open from sunrise to sunset, but the gate was locked. We told the kids they could squeeze through the bars if they wanted to since they sign said it was supposed to be open. It was just a cabin with no door, you know? They didn't have too much trouble getting through. It was sooooo funny when a car started coming up the road. They all PANICKED and ran back into the cabin to hide--with great big scared eyes--as if it was a cop coming to arrest them or something! Ha! For some reason they all had a harder time making it back OUT through the bars than they had getting in. ?!
So now you, too, have seen and experienced the Mark Twain cabin in all of it's glory. ;-)

We drove and drove and at about three o'clock we finally made it:

Get it? Yosemite... and then Sam... YOSEMITE SAM?! :-) I've long wanted to visit Yosemite National Park and I'm soooooo glad we were able to loop through there on this trip. I would tell you all about it, but it would be the same words I've been using throughout this entire trip: beautiful, gorgeous, tremendous... You get the idea. A picture paints a thousand words. Unfortunately, I was super disappointed in the way most of the pictures turned out today! We got a few real good ones, but the majority of them were pretty washed out and just didn't end up looking anything like it did in real life. So if you want to see what it REALLY looks like you'll just have to go there. But stop by Albuquerque on your way, Sister Tammy. ;-)

Here are a whole bunch of pictures, most of which don't require any commentary.


Ha! James and I didn't think the sun was that bright, but apparently the kids did! (Notice the waterfall wa-a-a-a-ay back there, then the winding river through the valley.)



Joe trying to abide by the DON'T GET WET TODAY rule.


See all the little shiny specks? Is it gold, or fools gold? James and I are about 99% sure that it's iron pyrite (fools gold)... but there's always the chance we could be wrong, you know. Which leaves you asking the question: Who's the real fool? The one who takes it and has it checked out just in case, even if you're pretty sure it's not the real thing... or the person who perhaps passes up a fortune because you think it's probably fake? ;-) Either way, it was fun to see it in the edge of the river. It's probably a crime to remove it from Yosemite anyway, ESPECIALLY if it's real. Ha!
And here's Joe, after having broken then DON'T GET WET TODAY rule. The story was that he was stepping from one rock to another and somehow never knew that he had walked through the water at all--but his shoes and the bottom of his jeans were soaked completely through. If it were any other kid they'd be in big trouble for lying. But I happen to know he was telling the truth. He had NO IDEA he'd walked through the water until several seconds later when he realized his feet were cold and wet. Amazing.




Okay, so this one DOES need some commentary. Ha! I picked out this great spot for a picture on the bridge. I stood right where I needed to, then handed the camera to James. He kept circling around (way too far) and I was trying to explain, "No, James--not THERE. I don't want the waterfall coming straight down into my HEAD, just sort of off to the side..." I was at the HEAD part when he took this, I think. Ha! He did take another one from the right spot, but it was all washed out. I figured most folks would enjoy this one better anyway. Ha!
This is more how the picture was SUPPOSED to be lined up. :-)



This is Joe after he broke the DON'T GET WET TODAY rule. Again. I don't even know what the story was with this one--I couldn't bear to listen to it!

This is not a Redwood tree, just a regular old pine tree. A really, really big California sized pine tree! See the little itty-bitty James down there at the bottom of it?

The kids needed to RUN some today since it was mostly a drive-and-look-at-the-pretty-scenery day. I think James was racing with them in this picture. What a great place to get out and run. :-)

And that's it! It was a nightmare getting out of the park. There were sooooooooooooo many people and cares in Yosemite Valley and I just couldn't figure it out. It's still May, right?! It's not really big vacation time for most people, right?! Most kids are still in school, right?! SATURDAY. We went to Yosemite National Park on a Saturday!!! Is that dumb, or what?! It wasn't intentional; we've just been moving along to the next thing each day and I guess Saturday had to fall in there sometime. Oh well, we did get out. We drive to Fresno and got a room at about 8:30, then James brought back Dominoes Pizza for dinner. I don't know if it's just because I was so hungry or what, but it was really good! (I'm a Pizza Hut girl.) And that was it! Tomorrow morning, we get up and go at it again. Really looking forward to our next big stop (maybe the last--we haven't decided yet) as we make our way back home. :-)