Saturday, June 9th
This is what we woke up to at 6 a.m. - 3 men in sleeping bags sleeping right in front of Rhoda!! Do you think we could go back to sleep! Too much to puzzle out. I saw red tail-lights in front of Rhoda after I'd gone to bed but thought it was guy-in-green-tent just getting something out of his car. And there was a van tight up to the back of us with I guess people sleeping in it and a new car behind and on other side with a tent and 2 new cars in front on other side. I didn't dare take more pictures for fear of being a snoopy old lady. But now there was the big RV, us and 10 other cars who spent the night in the sand pit. 3 cars had already left by 6 a.m., 1 sleeping bag guy got up and went fishing in stream across the road, big RV left before us, green-tent was just waking up, 1 more sleeping bag got up and it was a girl who spent 15 mins sitting in the car with a mirror doing make-up and when we pulled out, after breakfast and brushing our teeth just feet from still-sleeper-in- bag, we pulled out and he was still cozy as can be on floor of sand pit. What a fun time.
Well, that was about the most exciting part of the day. No, not really, well, maybe.
Drove back into the park and stopped at yet another waterfall on our way to Yosemite Village and this one was called of all things, Yosemite Falls:
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| Yosemite Falls - tallest, for sure in US, but maybe world? |
The Village was almost deserted so we found a nice shady spot for Rhoda in the "day-use" parking lot and took the shuttle to the Visitors Center which unless you wanted to plan your hiking experience, wasn't much. Went into the Ansel Adams Gallery and really enjoyed that.
Took another shuttle out to the Ahwahnee Hotel - THE place to stay if you have $500/night and like dark, heavy, maybe Native American interiors and/or are wanting to get married in an amazing setting like Steve Jobs did. I think most brides though might not like it as the mountains surrounding the hotel would command more attention I'm thinking than a bride, no matter how stunning, unless she was your daughter - or future wife possibly.
Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park
We had tea on the Mezzanine while waiting for the lunch room to open. Because we were early birds for lunch we got a beautiful table right by a window and split a Reuben sandwich and I had an Italian Soda. That was a treat. We hung around awhile pretending we belonged and watched others who were doing the same probably then took another shuttle to the Yosemite Lodge because we had heard from Mr. - rival-Paul Newman- blue-eyes who'd we chatted-up at the falls, that that was the best place to see the falls up close without climbing 400 stone steps. He was gorgeous to look at but I'm surprised his eyes didn't turn brown while telling us this un-truth. So, got on yet another shuttle back to the Village to hit the last "store" which was the Wal-Mart of camper's needs/tourist wants, in the whole park.
We walked back to the parking lot to encounter cars EVERYWHERE - on the road sides, in the fields, crammed in all over and found out from talking to another walker, it was free day in the park. Maybe it was free day/free week-end in all National Parks because I remember that from last year's journey. So we were glad that the sleeping bag gang got our juices running so early this a.m. and we arrived before the hoards.
We left the park this time via 120 with very little good scenery except for this:
but probably due to the fact that at some point there was a bad fire and one I don't think was a controlled burn.
We overshot our intended campground by 18 miles so stayed at another one closer to where we were for our most expensive night yet and probably not nearly as much excitement as last night!
DATA:
mileage: 77 lunch: $24 campground: $38
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