Peck Family Adventure: Oh, Yosemite! surprise, surprise!

Yosemite!!

Amazing, beautiful, majestic, unbelievable!

And .... no room at the inn! What? At the end of October? No campsites available? Yes, it is true! So, the Registration folks were super helpful! We were able to secure a heated or not heated camp-tent. We had stayed in this before, in Moosehead! So, it is a tent on a platform with 3 twin beds and a double, and electricity, woo-hoo! And we were all ready to stay in our own unheated tent anyway, so great! But, also no camp stoves! You are not able to cook, anything in Yosemite!! Really? Yep! So, good thing we were in Camp Curry because they have a cafeteria style restaurant and we enjoyed a surprisingly yummy supper!

We stayed 1 night at Camp Curry and then spent all day Tuesday in the valley, checking out the scenery, of course, and the Miwok Indian Museum, replica village, and a Ranger led walk on geology. The kids became Junior Rangers, again!

We hiked along the base of El Capitan and saw some climbers with sleeping racks out already, and others pulling their gear up. We were amazed because we could not tell they were there, by the naked eye. Once we were pretty close up it seemed like they were everywhere!

Another surprise, to me, was the wildlife! I did not really expect to see any. Yosemite is all about the rocks, right? Well, as usual there was a lot of info about bear safety, even more so here! We were not allowed to leave any food in cars! To the point that you are told to remove child seats due to the crumbs! You have to sign off on this and risk a very hefty fine if a ranger finds that you have not complied! They have horrifying footage of bears peeling car doors off or climbing in and getting stuck! You get to watch that while waiting in line! But, thankfully, we did not see any bears. What we did see was a mountain goat, through the binoculars, thanks to Cliff's eagle eye! So many mule deer! And mostly bucks! As well as a coyote!

here are some of the pictures!