We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
– Carly Simon
Since we need to plan our trips over a year ahead of time there is no way to take weather into account. There’s almost no way to take climate into account! As I’ve mentioned the Western US got a LOT of snow this year. Today this meant an extra three hour drive to reach Yosemite Valley. Fortunately, Sonora Pass, the next pass to the north was open so we avoided having to go even further out of our way as we did two years ago. We’re anticipating more snow issues at our next stop, Lassen Volcanic, as well so we’ve started working on backup plans for there.
We arrived at the Majestic Yosemite just after noon and planned to do a hike in the Mirror Lake area. Unloading Fred took a lot out of us though. All lodging in Yosemite requires that anything scented be removed from cars, and we have a lot of scented things. A Costco trip worth of scented things. It took a very friendly and patient bellman two carts and several boxes to get our cache of food plus our one night worth of gear plus our day hiking equipment to our room. Molly and I were exhausted after all that and decided that our actual first move would need to be to make a very stiff cocktail and settle into the leather recliners that adorned the El Dorado Diggins room.
That’s right, our room has a name. I’m not going to go into detail about the room or why we’re staying in it because I know Molly is, so please read her post for all the details. It’s pretty fabulous. After drinking a glass of whiskey I was finally ready to set out into the park. After a false start where we realized we’d need boots and hydro packs we set out on the Valley Loop Trail to find Mirror Lake. The trees and rocks were beautiful the entire way and the trail was so flat it was almost like being back in the Midwest (ignoring the 3,000 foot sky rocks towing over us on both sides). When we reached the lake we found the rock that John Muir sat on when he got the idea to have the area be declared a National Park. I think we somehow managed to have the best possible first four hours in Yosemite NP possible.
The Hotel Formerly Known as The Ahwahnee hosts an afternoon tea at four that we didn’t want to miss so we booked it back to “The Diggins” to put on a fresh shirt. We entered to find a plate of chocolate covered strawberries and a note from the manager. A welcome amenity! Very Kimptony! We spent the next hour in the Great Room drinking tea (whiskey) and playing cards. It’s going to be hard leaving this luxury to stay in a souped up tent tomorrow night. We also spent a good chunk of time discussing different possibilities for how to spend our time here. For all the planning I do I also try to leave flexibility so we can find things that will make us all happy. We know we want to tackle hiking up Yosemite Falls this trip and we’ve decided to do that in two days. As I was writing this we realized this means it will happen on . . . Day 14. Ellie is optimistic that if we are successful it will break the curse. I hope she’s right.
The other big event of the afternoon was the entertainment that happened outside our window during a brief afternoon stop in “The Diggins”. There were three men having a very normal conversation on the sidewalk outside. Then they said their goodbyes and two walked out of our view. The third pulled out what we thought at first was a wig. It turned out to be a full-on mask. Then a very very odd thing happened. I took video of this odd thing, but there’s not enough internet here to upload it. I promise to upload it as soon as possible. It is worth waiting for.
We’re going to very partially compensate for the price of the room by having a picnic somewhere in the park tonight. After finishing blogs we’ll head to Half Dome Village to see what provisions we can rustle up at the grocery store.
