Our days for the rest of this loop of the road trip until we get back to Knoxville will be fairly driving-heavy, but we still have some good detours to make. Today’s long drive took us through central California and Sacramento (or Sacramendy as Maeby Funke would have it) until we reached Yosemite. The land is really flat with mountains you can barely make out in the far distance. Minus these mountains, it actually looks a lot like Kansas or Nebraska, with lots of corn, farm machinery, and grain elevators. We got to Yosemite late in the afternoon and were lucky enough to get a campsite even though we hadn’t made reservations.
I didn’t really know what to expect from Yosemite or even what it was famous for. In fact, until we went to Yellowstone, I always confused the two parks. But Yosemite is famous for rocks and waterfalls. The most famous sites are clustered in Yosemite Valley, which also has a lot of the campgrounds and lodging. All those campsites were full when we got there, so we had a campsite near Glacier Point, about 30-45 minutes away from the Valley. Up the road from our campsite was an overlook of the valley, and we headed up there (along with a few hundred other people) to watch the sunset.
Yosemite is a bear-y park, so it’s the first time that’s been a factor in the last week or so. In terms of food storage, Yosemite is much stricter than the other parks we’ve been in. Everywhere else, you have to be really careful not to leave out any food that isn’t in immediate use, but as long as you leave it in your car with the windows rolled up, you’re fine. The bears are a bit cleverer at Yosemite, though, (smarter than your average one -B) and they have learned that they can actually rip the doors and trunks off cars to get to the food that they can smell inside. Therefore, everything with a scent (and that includes all food and toiletries) have to be locked in special bear boxes that are located at each campsite. The bears can still smell everything in there, but they have learned that they can’t get in, so they don’t bother (at least in theory). Bears on hikes don’t seem to be an issue though—I never even read or heard any suggestion of bringing bear spray along.
Not wanting to tempt the bear fates, we decided to eat in the valley so we wouldn’t have to deal with cooking at our campsite. It was dark when we got there, but it was a nearly full moon, which cast beautiful shadows on the rocks that you could see in the night. A lot of people rock climb in Yosemite, and we could see the lights of a number of climbers who were tackling the rocks in the dark. We then headed back to our tent for the night, where we mostly succeeded in staying warm with temperatures in the 20s.
-M
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