Yosemite Day 1

I’m afraid I have to eat a little crow here. In my post from Sequoia, I was a bit skeptical about all the Californians screaming and yelling about bears. I’ve been to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks where they have grizzly bears. I thought these people were being a bit ridiculous. Well, we were talking to several people, including a ranger and they all said that bears come into Dorst Creek campground (our campground in Sequoia) regularly. Every time you hear a car horn or people screaming and banging pots together, you know they are scaring a bear away. You can hear this happen about every 5-10 mins. One guy we were talking to said he was in camp two nights ago and felt a bear’s breath on his foot. Needless to say, all this freaked me out quite a bit. You would start to hear the people scaring the bears away as soon as darkness fell. It was like a zombie or vampire movie where you were scared to be out at night.

Kate and I both took a Benadryl to help us sleep through the bear noise that goes on all night. Kate was quite a bit more composed than I was, mainly because she doesn’t have to get up to use the bathroom at night. I wake up every night to go so all I could think about was running up on a bear in the middle of doing my business. I pee right outside the tent when we camp because I’m too lazy to walk to the bathroom. Last night I was terrified to walk to the bathroom. To be honest I was terrified to leave the tent. I woke up at 11:30 having to pee so bad I was in pain. I had gone to bed praying that I wouldn’t have to go, but I guess God wants me to face my fears. I laid there for a while contemplating how mad Kate would be if I just peed in the bed so I wouldn’t have to go outside. I’m 99% kidding about that. I finally got up the nerve to get a flashlight and peer out the door of the tent to make sure there wasn’t a bear outside waiting on me. I had a vision in my mind of a bear sitting at our picnic table reading the newspaper waiting on me to come out of the tent. I’m not sure why I feel so safe in the tent. Probably because we do a very thorough job of putting anything that may attract a bear in the bear locker. I laid there in the fetal position for another 5 mins trying to build up courage to go outside. I decided to take my chances and go outside. I had to pee a lot so it took a long time and I was feeling vulnerable to bear attack at any moment. Thankfully, I was able to finish and get back in the tent without incident. I was worried that I may have to go again since it was only 11:30 and I had drank a lot of water, but I didn’t wake up until daylight, so that was good. I don’t know if I could have gone out again. So, I take back all my remarks about the crazy people from California. I’ve yet to see a bear out here, but I’m sure scared to death of the night right now.

We woke up pretty early and got packed up yet again. We headed north toward Yosemite. I think we take for granted our highway system in NC. Usually, everything is pretty well marked as far as finding gas stations and food. California is not quite as efficient. We had to just pick and exit and rely on the GPS to get us to gas and a biscuit. The biscuits out here a smaller and denser than back home. They need a lesson in biscuit making from some of the Linkers. They do have sweet tea at the McDonalds out here, which I found interesting. Usually you can’t find any sweet tea once you get out of Tennessee.

We got to Yosemite around 1:00pm and grabbed a campsite at Bridalveil Creek campground. We wanted to stop at the first one we got to, to make sure we had a place to camp tonight and ended up with a nice campsite out of all the hustle and bustle of Yosemite Valley. Our campsite backs right up against a stand of trees with a meadow on the other side. I feel this leaves us open to bear attack, but the middle campsites were occupied with a bunch of screaming kids, so I’ll take my chances with the bears. We set up our tent and ate a little lunch. We decided to take a trip up to Glacier Point, which is one of the “must see” viewing areas in Yosemite. When we got up to the top, we realized why. We got our first view of the famous Yosemite valley with its huge granite mountains carved out by a glacier millions of years ago. At Glacier Point you can see the whole valley and all three waterfalls. It is a vista that is hard to describe and I don’t know how much the photos do it justice. We mostly took photos of Half Dome. We also got our first look at El Capitan, the largest stone monolith in the world. It’s pretty famous for rock climbers. We ate a hot dog and had some ice cream while we looked around the souvenir shop.

After Glacier Point, we went back to camp and cooked dinner. We’ve invented a new dish called Chicken Helper. We take grilled chicken and combine in a pot with macaroni, pasta sauce and green peppers and onions. It’s pretty good, but has a hard time rivaling Hamburger Helper, which is one of my personal favorites. Unfortunately we’re out of that, so I’ll make do with chicken.

We decided to go back up to Glacier Point to watch the sunset, which is supposed to be one of the “must do’s” here. The valley is in the east so the sun sets behind it, but the sun’s rays make the rocks turn different colors as it goes down and it was a pretty good way to spend an evening. We worked on some post cards while we were there, and took a lot of pictures.

Right before dark, we got back to camp and washed up so we could be in the tent before it was completely dark. Needless to say, I was a bit dismayed when I saw people had left out food containers and garbage, which is what attracts bears. I’ll talk about the night in my next post.

That’s all for night one in Yosemite.