I know a little place, not far.
-Greensky Bluegrass
Another great day of RTXIX! I woke up the latest and with the best night’s sleep I’ve had so far this summer. The Spirit of Diggins worked its magic in the night. Molly and I started the day with a couple cups of coffee in bed and since we had ALL the food in the room we had our pick of anything for breakfast.
The last amenity of The Hotel Formerly Known As Ahwahnee we hadn’t taken advantage of yet was the pool, so Ellie and I got our suits on and headed down for a swim. It was the perfect morning. We had the place entirely to ourselves, the water was the perfect temperature, and the trees and cliffs formed a canopy above us. There was even a waterfall visible through the branches! Before long Molly and Zoe joined us and Zoe decided she’d have to put her suit on as well. Once the girls were swimming together I grabbed some more coffee and a real newspaper and joined Molly on the poolside couch.
With checkout looming we all begrudgingly headed back to the room to pack up. I think the shower in The Diggins is best described as “an intense showering experience”. The staff has ensured that The Diggins has the highest water pressure of any shower I’ve ever been in. Even if I hadn’t already had a vasectomy, I’m pretty sure I would now be unable to have children. It still hurts.
Our hiking destination for the day was Artist’s Point. I can’t remember exactly how I discovered it, but I’m so glad I did. It was a rough hour between checkout and the trailhead. Yosemite Valley was crawling with people and cars. They’re everywhere. We parked at Bridlevail Falls Trailhead which was also crazy busy, but rather than walking the 1,000 feet to the base of the falls we turned the opposite direction and walked up Wawona Road. After just a few minutes we found the unmarked remains of the Old Wawona Road. Before the tunnel was built this was an entrance to the park. Now it’s an unmaintained trail that doesn’t even appear on all the maps, and we had it to ourselves the entire day.
The hike to Artist’s Point really isn’t long or hard. It was about a mile and a half and 500ish feet up. We crossed two waterfalls that had reclaimed terrain once spanned by bridges, and soon found what may be one of the best views of the valley. I don’t remember the exact story of this place, but the paraphrased version is that one of the first images of Yosemite was painted here. This image was used in marketing back East and the view became synonymous with the valley. Now that the tunnel has been built most visitors stop at the Tunnel View Overlook and see a similar, but lower view. It really seemed like Artist’s Point has been completely abandoned by the masses. This special little place even had some of the giant pinecones lying around that the rest of the valley has been picked clean of.
After hiking back down to Fred we did take the quick stroll up to Bridlevail Falls. We had read it would feel like a wet tornado minus the cows. The shower in the Diggins surpassed it in this measure.
After the splurge on The Diggins we didn’t originally plan on spending a second night here. However, we decided that we wanted to do more hiking here so we booked a tent in Half-Dome Village. It isn’t as nice, but it’ll do. We did our organizing and repacking as quickly as possible and are now back in the Great Lounge to take advantage of the wifi that our code still works for while blogging and drinking our $1.50 beers from the Yosemite grocery store. Tonight we’ll have dinner here at the dining room, then tomorrow we’ll get up early, 4:30 AM, to tackle Yosemite Falls.
