Day 5 – June 28, 2024 – Santa Monica, CA to El Portal, CA

We are on the move today!  Due to a scheduled tour activity in the evening tonight, Matt whipped all of us up into a frenzy to make sure that we made it out of bed on time – he even had Sarah worried we wouldn’t make it to Yosemite in time.  “The tram waits for no one,” he kept saying (Matt sourced this from sad reviews and the tram website).  We pulled it off and were out of bed and out the door by 6:45 am.

Good bye, moderately nice hotel!  Best valet service ever, too.  We got our car and rolled around the corner to gas up, and hit up Starbucks for breakfast.  We then took off for the drive to Yosemite!

Our drive took us north, along the freeway through traffic, because it’s LA.  On the way, we listened to various Spanish language stations (Noah, translate for us) and listened to talk radio.  Let me tell you, people from LA are NOT happy that Bronny was signed to the Lakers, only because of his dad.  And we are eating up this drama.  We may need to hate watch some Lakers ball next year, lol.

Our plan was to drive up to Fresno and hit up Costco or Target for snacks, then head over to Yosemite.  We noticed that most of the drive through to Fresno was made up of farm fields.  Now, we are not under the impression that our produce or olive oil comes from grandpa’s ye old family farm up the road, but the farm fields in California are….creepy.  Rows and rows and rows of trees, and workers in full on chemical suits spraying them with things (well, we saw that other day), but it is creepy.  Then we saw the truck loads and train loads of our precious Cuties, and then smashed Cuties all over the freeway.  Well, boo.

We landed in Fresno at the Costco and loaded up on easy to prepare foods and things to bring hiking, and then feasted at the food court. 

Off we went towards Yosemite – we are staying at the Yosemite Cedar Lodge, which we timed to be 13 minutes from the lodge to the entrance, in El Portal.   We eventually made our way there, and got to the lodge around 2:30 pm.  This is a traditional “motor lodge outside of National Park Entrance” type of joint, and they were nice enough to check us in early.  They warned us about keeping food in our cars as there was a bear prowling around (probably part of their schtick to keep people feeling like they are in the wilderness).  Our room is a kitchenette suite that is retro, in that it has not been updated since the 1980s.  BUT we have a full sized fridge!  Also the shower head is at about the 5 foot mark.  Sorry, Noah.  And B and Dad and Mom.

We dropped off of all of our food and stuff, checked out the place, and then headed in to Yosemite.  There were multiple signs stating “60 minute wait”, etc at intervals as we drove closer to the entrance – we only waited one minute.  So starting tomorrow, you have to have reservations to get in to the park.  We have a 3 day reservation starting tomorrow so we did take care of that, but what a horrible surprise it would be if we hadn’t known about that.  We had to buy it FIVE months ago.  

We headed in, and spent some time driving along the Merced river, checking out the sights.  We then made our way over to the Yosemite Valley Lodge and managed to find parking and picked up our tram tickets.  We had done some reading about Yosemite sights, and the tram (really more benches on a flatbed truck) tours were highly rated.  We wandered over to Lower Yosemite Falls to check them out, and Zoe and B and Dad quickly made their way to the bottom of the falls for some light bouldering.  Meanwhile, Noah and Mom used the Cornell Bird ID to figure out the absolutely adorable bird that we kept seeing was a Steller’s Jay.  Eventually we made our way back as we had signed up for the 6 pm tour, and were the second group in line when the tram truck pulled up!

We sat halfway back, and enjoyed a 2 hour tour where a park ranger narrated the geologic history, cultural history and the sights while we drove around.  It was a beautiful night and the wildfire smoke had cleared significantly from the last tour per the driver.  He and the ranger gal were excellent.  Sarah really enjoyed sitting on the end and watching all of the curious onlookers gawk at us as we drove by.  It was really enjoyable and helped us figure out where all the major landmarks were, too.  Highly recommend!  Note: we learned you cannot tip a federal employee, but the driver was definitely note a federal employee, unlike the ranger.

We made our way back to the lodge, picked up some burgers and chicken at the Base Camp Eatery next door to the lodge, and after a beer, tucked in for the night as we had an early day planned!

Day 6 – June 29, 2024 – El Portal, CA

We wretched ourselves out of bed bright and early and were on the road by 6:30ish?  6:45ish?  Hmm, it felt earlier.  Ha!  Initially our plan was do to the Mist Trail today, but we were worried that we weren’t going to be well rested enough, so we are going to save that for tomorrow.  We decided to get up bright and early and do a shorter hike to Artist’s Point that was near Tunnel View, and then check out the rest of the Yosemite Valley and maybe the Visitor’s Center.

There was zero line to get into the park and we made our way up to Tunnel View, where the trail start was.  We started on the trail, and started climbing up almost immediately, and then veered onto an old stagecoach road.  We were supposed to look for a beautiful view at something called Artist’s Point, located at a spray painted green rock.  We couldn’t find the rock, and then crossed a river by hopping on rocks – the river then appeared to turn into a waterfall below us – then we realized maybe we never saw the rock and turned around.  Eventually we found the rock and looked up, and were treated to a beautiful vista over the valley.  

We made our way down the trail – which was much trickier at the bottom going down, compared with coming up.  It was only about 2.5 miles, but that up and down just slays ya!  

We then meandered over to Bridal Veil Falls and took the short paved trail to it.  Zoe climbed down on the rocks by the river, and spent the rest of her time hopping rock to rock along the trail.  The rest of us enjoyed the cool spray from the falls.

Off we went – to find the entire Valley completely jammed full by 9 am.  Ooof, we knew it was coming but still sucked.  Matt threw out – let’s check out Tioga Road!  It felt like Going to the Sun Road with how it cuts across the entire park.  Done and done – it was 10 am by the time we got up there, and we eagerly spent our time looking at the map for eateries, of which it looks like there were 3 available along the road.  Apparently Belvitas and sausage sticks weren’t enough for us.

We made our way along the road, and stopped whenever something looked interesting.  We noted that White Wolf was closed, which was one of the eating options.  Huh.  We stopped at  Olmsted Point, which had a beautiful view of Half Dome and other nearby peaks.  We then motored along, and stopped at the Tioga Visitor Center, where Matt happily stamped the passports and eavesdropped on the rangers’ advice to others.  

Eagerly, we awaited the Tuolumne Meadows Grill that was just down the road from the Visitor Center, located next to a post office.  We drove by a boarded up building with a white tent outside with a mailbox and some guys sitting next to it.  Oh noooo….  The kids were starving, and our paltry rations were not going to hold them.  We motored on even faster, and Matt said, well, at this rate we might as well drive all the way to Mono Lake on the east side.

We exited the park (after enjoying the gorgeous views of the meadows and peaks) and into the National Forest.  The scenery was STUNNING!  Snow capped peaks in the distance and all.  We drove past the husk of the last restaurant on the road, that appeared to have boarded up windows.  Damn.  So ten miles later, we rolled into the “Mobil Restaurant”.  Yes, it was the most expensive gas station food in the world.  And it was a racket, with the gas station lawn filled with locals and tourists alike.  And it was the best food we have eaten yet.  Sarah got tacos carnitas – Matt got fish tacos – Noah got a bacon cheeseburger that cost $20 – B got cheese pizza – Z got a hot dog.  And it was all AMAZING.  Matt also paid almost $7 a gallon for gas.  **eek**  This little monopoly was amazing – and the food was SO good.

We then headed down to the Mono Lake visitor center.  Mono Lake is a huge lake next to the town of Lee Vining and is very alkaline and has incredibly high salinity.  It is filled with tiny shrimp and alkaline lake flies.  Sarah was recommended by two people she knew to come here – the lake is gorgeous, but the real fun is getting in it.  We drove down to Navy Beach and checked it out – it is really salty and when you get out of it (in our case, hands and feet), you have crusting on your hands and feet.  And you can see many creatures in the water too.  Would have been a trip to swim in!

We headed back, getting on to Tioga Road, and making our way back to Yosemite and into the and across the park.  We were exhausted and our tummies stuffed with the most delicious gas station food you can imagine.  Nay, most delicious food of the trip so far!  And the most expensive.

After we finally got back to the hotel, we hit up the pool in the scorching heat, with a bunch of people speaking French.  We then went back to the hotel room and while Sarah was searching up the restaurant menu, she curiously noticed google kept autofilling in “Yosemite Cedar Lodge” with the word murders.  Oh no….  Yeah, grisly murders in 1999.  The only good news about it was that besides the fact the killer is locked up, is that our room clearly hasn’t been redone since 1999, so you know the murders weren’t in our room.  (We are in 117, turns out the very tragic murders were in 509 – and the murders may or may not have occurred at the resort, but the serial killer had found and abducted at least 4 people at the resort that he then murdered).  

We ordered up food and had a beer, read no more about this resort’s concerning history, and are getting ready for some awesome hiking in the morning!

Day 7 – June 30, 2024 – El Portal, CA

So there is often a “classic hike” for the masses (not incredibly challenging in that it doesn’t require mountaineering skills, etc, but very beautiful) at a National Park that everyone says you should go on.  The Mist Trail is that hike here at Yosemite.  We were interested but it appears there were several barriers – construction limiting parking, how busy the park is, the heat dome enveloping the park this week, and most importantly, the fact that the Mist Trail was going to be closed from 7am to 3 pm every day during the week for the next few weeks for repairs to the granite stairs (sounds ominous) starting TOMORROW.  So today is the last day it will be open during the day for a week.  Yikes.

So we got up extra early.  Alarms were set for 4:45 am and 5 am, and we were on the road we think by 5:30 am.  Hoot hoot!   On our drive in, Matt spied a cute little bear, likely a yearling – he gets $10 for Sarah for a verified bear sighting.  It was playing on a log near the road.  The first and possibly only sighting!  The offer is open to everyone in the family.

We rolled into Curry Village, where you could park and walk 1 mile to the trailhead, and holy CATS.  It was a madhouse.  We snagged one of the last parking spots in a little parking lot that looked mostly legal, and the main Village lot was full by 6:15 am.  The Trailhead parking couldn’t be accessed.  So this is a very popular hike, and another popular hike to Half Dome (that requires permits and looks terrifying to Sarah, rest of family is interested) also leaves from here as well.  So it isn’t unreasonable that this entire area would be mobbed.

The one complaint we have about Yosemite is that the signage is really kind of terrible – the Valley is filled with random meandering bike trails, regular trails, and one way roads that diverge, and while driving is fairly straightforward, walking anywhere is fairly confusing.  So we are standing there at 6:15 am, looking at a sign that has where we are and where we want to go, and Matt still had to go to a front desk for a campground to get pointed in the right direction.

That being said, we walked the mile to the trailhead and there were SO many people there!  wow.  7 am on the dot we started.  See the above description for our planned hike. That planned trail hike would be about 7.6 miles or so, then another mile back to the car, for a total of about 9.5 miles.

We took off, everyone carrying multiple liters of water as a hot day was anticipated.  It’s 95 degrees every day here. We ascended about 2000 feet in the first 2 miles, just for reference sake.  We had multiple beautiful views of the valley behind us, then Vernal Falls once you cross the footbridge.  Next, you ascend multiple granite stairs that are neatly placed with railings to even hold on to.  Then you ascend to the falls itself, and the emerald pool.  

We took some photos there (thanks to the Penn State family for taking ours!) and had a snack.  Yes, more Belvitas.  We discovered Zoe to be the squirrel whisperer, they followed her everywhere (probably sensed that she was the easiest to hit up for treats – she did not give in).  

Next up, the Mist Trail!  It is called that because the spray of the waterfall douses you with mist.  Noah and Zoe put on their rain jackets for this, but the rest of us enjoyed every second of the cool mist.  Even though it was the first day of July, there was still plenty of mist hitting us, enough to soak our shirts and hats and sunglasses.  The mist did make the granite steps, which no longer were as nicely maintained, a bit dicey.

We then crossed over the river and began up the other side of it towards Nevada Falls.  That was a bit spooky.  There were no guardrails and we see why the “steps” might benefit from some upcoming repairs.  One wrong step, or the granite is wobbly, and down you go.  “Mom, if you step wrong, you would break a lot of bones or die”, Zoe said cheerily as we walked slowly up the stairs.  Why, yes, yes that is true.  

We made it to the top after resting a few times, and it was glorious.  Quite pretty, there were vault toilets, and a lot of space to hang out and look at the falls.  It was kind of a neat congregation of trails, and Half Dome was right there, only a few miles away.  We enjoyed ourselves for a bit.  There were plenty of people on the trail, but not so many it felt dangerous.  That being said, we would not recommend going up to Nevada Falls, then coming back down the Mist Trail back to Vernal Falls.  First, going down those granite steps would be TOUGH.  Even more difficult with the hoards of people starting the trail later in the morning.  There was a few folks coming down, and it looked challenging for them.  

We started down the John Muir Trail, which connects back at the footbridge.  It is a series of switchbacks down the side of the mountain/cliff face.  It was very very pretty – and the views of Nevada Falls were the best we saw all day.  It was really wet, with streams running down the center of the trail and water dripping on you.  Felt great, and we probably only saw a dozen people then entire 2 miles or so we were on it, before getting back to the footbridge.  We were actually worried we were on the wrong trail for a while there were so few people!

We took frequent breaks, mostly because we were tired and it was getting HOT.  Only a few mosquitos on the way up and really none on the way down, which was good.  When we hit Vernal Falls, it was a mad house.  SO many people.  Like, a conga line all the way down the trail.  It was insane.  We look at it as, lots of people want to get out there and do the nice hike, and the lower part is pretty family friendly.  

We staggered onto the walkway back to the car, and everyone was starving.  And hot.  And tired.  We kind of lurked around the restaurants and ultimately decided to get ice cream.  We filed in and all enjoyed some NPS ice cream – Matt did get his traditional huckleberry.  We then decided we were hungry enough still to look at other options, so checked out the grocery store and Zoe got her precious candy (bribery for doing hike), Sarah got a large sketchy can of Coke, and the boys got candy too.  We made it to the car, and made someone’s day when we backed out and they got our parking spot.  That always feels good!

Drove back to the hotel and were exhausted.  We relaxed in the room with some AC, Sarah made her Costco Ramen noodles (delicious), Z had mac and cheese, and everyone had stuff to eat from the Costco stash.  After we had recovered, we drove back to the park (ha!) and hit up the Visitor Center in Yosemite Valley for stamps and a stuffed bear (with stuffed radio tracking collar, as the gift shop explained was to track troublesome bears) for Z, and then went over to the Exploration Center so B could get the NPS coins he collects.  Picked up deli food at a deli to go, and then sped home.  Good bye Yosemite!!

The pool was inviting, so we adults grabbed some weirdly large beers (General Sherman IPA and Half Dome Wheat) and hit the pool with those and the kids.  Despite it being like 5 pm, we were baking outside and the pool was filled with more Europeans – German and French were what we think most people were speaking.  We adults enjoyed the beers, everyone played in the pool, and it was fabulous.

Headed back in for TV time (NO Shark Tank tonight and Sarah won’t be sad if she never sees that again in her life as we have watched it every night until tonight) and to eat our delicious deli food.  What a fabulous night!

Day 8 – July 1, 2024 – El Portal, CA to Badger, CA

Alas, the time has come to bid farewell to our hotel and Yosemite.  Parting thoughts:

1. Yosemite and the Channel Islands both had weirdly little focus on the Native Americans and indigenous folks who lived on the land before us – stark contrast to the other national parks (and state parks!) we have been to.  Like noticeably less so.  The Exploration Center in Yosemite had a very nice exhibit, but it is weird how little focus there is on that.  
2. And there was a weird focus on glaciers and how much they shaped the landscape.  Like they were magical.  Maybe it is just the Wisconsinite in us, but glaciers are not that magical and we know all about them.  Eh.
3. The creepy handyman who murdered everyone lived above the restaurant that we got food from – and the pool was behind the restaurant.
4. Also, it appears the room at least some of the people were kidnapped from is still in use!  We drove by it.  Like good god, how would you feel about that?
5. Can you imaging hiking all day in the 90 degree heat then coming back to your National Park non-air conditioned tent on a raised platform that you just have to sleep in the heat in, and are not allowed to cook food in or have food in?  There were tons of these all over the the valley that people were staying in.  I’d rather stay in the lodge we did.  Yes, it was baseline shady and is associated with murders, but it had multiple pools, beer for sale in the lobby, and air conditioning.

Anyway, while we adults ate lemon poppy seed and/or coffee cake Costco muffins for the last day and packed, B and Z went to check out the game room, bringing along Zoe’s purse containing approximately $400 in quarters.  They were not excited to find a pool table and ping pong table, but made do.

We took off after packing up our remaining Costco food (we will be eating Belvitas for months) and took off for Fresno.  The plan was to make our way back to Fresno, grab some lunch and get some groceries as our mountain cabin has a full kitchen.  We hit up Fresno, and all of us argued about what random chain restaurant to eat at – there is a fine line between commercial real estate and sketchiness in Fresno, and we were treading it.  We settled on… Wienerschnitzel’s (SIGH).  B had seen this chain in other towns and kept asking about it, and FINE we will eat at… Wienerschnitezel’s.  On a Monday at 12:40 pm.  Oh no, no drive thru for us, we are dining in at…. WIENERSCHNITZEL’S.

Apparently it was a hot dog place.  And it was packed.  Like, Sarah judges these people.  In fact, while we were waiting for our hot dogs and burgers to be delivered to our table, she overheard two women in their 20s talking unironically about how great Wienerschnitzel’s was.  Like WTF.  

Anyway, the food was pretty decent!  Go figure.  Staff was friendly and we cannot complain.  Heck, some guy was working from a back booth with a laptop.  WIENERSCHNITZEL’S.

We then hit up WalMart and picked up some luncheon meat, cheese, bread, and frozen pizzas, as well as fruit and veggies and yogurt.  We made our way to some highways that then led to a road that was essentially never straight and barely two lanes wide, curving through the hills and mountains.  A US Army helicopter hovered ominously over us for the great majority of it (probably busting some militias in the area).  Towards the end of the journey, Zoe was almost sick from the twisting and turning road.  We turned into the Sequoia RV Resort and thought oh, my.  Matt went to get the combination for our house.  There are four “houses” (cabins) here and maybe 30? RV spots – separate sides of the property.  There is a small pond/lake and horse shoes, laundry, a library of DVDs and books, too.  

We got into house 1, and well, well.  It is a fine place to stay for two nights, but we have some serious concerns that the laminate flooring is what is holding the house together, and sub flooring might not exist in some places.  Sarah placed some dining chairs over some areas so we didn’t walk on them.  Voodoo, who cares, her foot isn’t going through the floor.  It took several hours before we could make the satellite TV work.  And we couldn’t get the oven to turn on and had to call someone to help, turns out a breaker needed to be flipped.  The layout is… interesting and yet weirdly works for us.  There is one bedroom, with a twin bed and queen bed.  The other side of the house has a bedroom with a queen bed, and around a wall partition, another queen bed.  Also many sliding doors with no locks, but dowels to keep out the predators.  Except the one queen bedroom’s sliding door is partially open and won’t close all the way.  So guess mom and dad get that room!  The deck is… rustic (dangerous).  So only two people on the large wrap around deck at all times, and no standing or sitting on the same board!  The views are dynamite, the living room is enormous, and the kitchen is great.  No insects (so far).

We had pizzas for dinner, Matt did some laundry, and he and Noah picked out “Night at the Museum” to watch for the night.  We all sat down for a night of watching a movie, and then Matt fixed the TV so we could watch other things!  Hoot hoot.  Then we browsed on the internet and enjoyed ourselves as it got dark outside – Sarah then got a glimpse of fluorescent yellow on the deck about to come in one of the many sliding doors and started screaming.  Oops, it was Braden.  Sarah never saw him leave but apparently he was sitting outside on the deck.  We judge the neighbors here for not checking in on us because Sarah terrified everyone in our family (because B terrified HER, let’s be clear).

Anyway, we all settled in for a big day of TWO National Parks tomorrow!