Year 2 - Day 204 - July 24

We hit the road early this morning and drove to Yosemite. So far, it has had a lot more in common with Disney World than I was expecting. First of all, it's FULL of people. We had to wait in line for more than 30 minutes just to pay to get through the gate. Yowza! There are no parking spaces anywhere, and very little wildlife because there are people everywhere. It's really pretty, though. And it's much more accessible than the last two parks. We haven't been on roads hanging off mountains too often, at least for the places we went today.

We started with a journey up to Glacier Point to look down at the waterfalls and valley.

The waterfalls are amazing. They had a late snow here this year, so much snow that they had to evacuate the people staying in the park. All that snow is now melting and making great rivers & waterfalls. The other great view from Glacier Point is of Half Dome.

Using our zoom lens as binoculars, we could see a few people up on top. They recently started issuing permits to climb Half Dome, because of the huge crowds. It's several miles from the bottom (in the woods) to the top of the mountain, and you have to do it with a person right behind you and a person right in front of you the whole time. That's how crazy it was. Now they only let 450 people do it a day. I imagine that's still pretty busy. The last section is up a rock face with cables. I don't know how they do it, since people are going up and coming down at the same time. Not interested!!!!!

Then we headed down to the valley to look up at waterfalls! They don't look that big in the pictures, until you spot a tiny person for perspective.

We had a great dinner at the Mountain Room Restaurant. It was expensive (More Disney World qualities - pay to get in, pay through the nose for everything inside) but tasty. And you couldn't beat the view! (The water fall is in that window, but my phone's camera didn't do it justice.

It felt funny to eat in such a nice dining room in the same clothes we wore to run around in the woods today, but the information desk & host at the restaurant assured us we were fine, and were surrounded by others in the same attire. Many people wait for reservations at the fanciest hotel dining room at the Ahwahnee Hotel across the valley, but I think not having to wear nice clothes combined with the waterfall views make this place a better deal!

We did not make the decision to take this vacation until mid-March, and all the rooms with 4 walls in Yosemite were either booked or over $500 a night. That should have prepared us for the huge crowds, but we were still surprised. We found a hotel just outside the park in El Portal called Cedar Lodge. (Don't be tricked, it's not really a town, just 2 hotels & a park service warehouse!) After our barely above camping experience at Sequoia and the not very fancy website of the Cedar Lodge, we were pleasantly surprised at how nice (and how large) the motel really is. The only down side was that the whole Merced River valley is a cell phone dead spot meaning the phones & ipad couldn't work and the hotel wanted to charge almost $10 a day for internet access available for only daytime hours and only in the lobby. We opted instead to be happy off the grid since our families had the name & number to the hotel just in case.

*Yes, obviously I'm posting this later since we didn't have internet. My one big issue with this hotel is that the doors opened to the outside not hallways and we didn't have a chain lock. At the time I thought it was no big deal because it was the wilderness but in googling to find the hotel's link for this post, I came across the fact that people were murdered in the area. Lovely. Glad I didn't know then!!! Honestly, I would have still stayed there and I still recommend it and the sister hotel down the street. Rooms were big and clean and nice.