Monthly Archives: December 2010

Yosemite – Day 1

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We woke up a bit late this morning.  11AM actually!  My philosophy is if you sleep that long you must have needed it!  I think we did.  So we skipped breakfast and went straight to lunch.  Duh.

We headed over to the main visitors center.  We have never really spent much time there so this was a welcome relief that we were not rushed.  In a bit, a naturalist walk/talk was starting just outside the door.  We decided to join up.  The talk was very enjoyable and the walk was very easy.  However, 3 months after the fact, we cannot remember the specific subject.  We walked across some meadows and one of our fellow attendees pointed out some deer in the grass (see below).

Deer

 

After the walk was over we walked to the nearest bridge and took the requisite shot of half dome.

Half Dome

We went back to the main village area, looked around a bit and went back to the trailer.  I had heard of someone talking about going to Glacier Point to watch the sunset over the valley.  This idea intrigued me so we headed out to do so.  As we got on 41 and headed to the Tunnel the traffic was backed up.  I was not sure if we would make it to Glacier Point in time (it takes about 1 hour to get there).  An additional problem was that I didn't have any headlights!  What?  That wasn't going to work.  We pulled over into the Tunnel View parking lot.  I started to investigate the headlight problem.

It turns out that I found the problem.  I added a special harness that senses when the lights are turned on and then powers the headlights directly from the battery.  It is supposed to help headlight brightness but it uses two relays.  One relay is for the low beams and one is for the high beams.  The low beam relay had failed.  I swapped the relays so I had low beams but no high beams, which is workable.  However there was absolutely NO WAY to get to the sunset viewing now.  So we just sat at Tunnel View and watched it.

Sunset from Tunnel View

With a bit of sadness we went back to the campground but decided to go to the evening ranger program.  The subject was bats.  Again, very informative.

Arriving in Yosemite

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Labor day had arrived!  We are doing the opposite of everyone else, we are going TO our destination.  We saw a steady stream of cars leaving the park.  Normally we will take highway 41 into the park since it is the most direct.  But I wanted a change.  The stretch from the south entrance to the valley floor is kind of a long haul and the last time we were there (not too long before) they were tearing it up and there was a lot of gravel.  Gravel and aluminum don't mix!  An alternative was the highway 120 entrance but we had also done that many times and it too was a long haul to the floor.

We took the alternative, highway 140.  We stopped and had lunch in Mariposa before continuing on.  Our son and his girlfriend were going to go to Yosemite for a drive and meet us at the campground for a bit.  They were ahead of us.  The one drawback to 140 is the slide bypass.  However reading up on it I realized that we could do it with no problems.  It was kind of fun too!

It seemed to take forever to get there and we wondered what happened to our son. We were in the line to enter the campground and we saw them coming OUT of the campground.  They turned around and followed us back.  We then setup the trailer.  Roxie wanted a picture of her and I in front of the trailer.  To give you some background here, Roxie had rotator cuff surgery one month prior to our trip.  She was still supposed to wear a sling but didn't want it on when the picture was taken.  Luckily a shot was taken with us by the trailer.  I am asking her is she is serious about taking off the sling.  Bottom line, this is my blog so I am posting this picture:

By the trailer...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron and Kellyn left.  We setup the lounge chairs and kicked back.  While resting the squirrels were all over the place.  One even jumped up on me!

We got dinner going and Roxie had me put out the tablecloth on the picnic table.  One camper (in a tent) came by and said it was fancy.  I think he was just jealous.

That evening we went to the ranger program and learned about mountain climbing of all types.  Interesting.

Time for bed.   ZZZZZ