Day 7: Yosemite

Julian and Rohan woke us with giggling at 6:20am.  I went in with them to give Steve a bit more rest and then we finally all got up at 7:20am.  We had breakfast, showered and then headed to the camp store to get some bottled water.  

It was a nice RV park (in daylight) but it strangely had a petting farm.  Julian and Rohan gave a rabbit a pat before the smell of the llamas drove us away.  It was 10am before we headed back to Groveland (such a weird name) to grocery shop.  The little supermarket had fruit, vegetables, meat and beer so we were sorted. But we forgot the milk!

It was only 60km to Yosemite and it was a picturesque drive.  Rohan had a little nap which suited us fine.  There was a lot of bush fire damage which appeared to be quite old.  We could smell smoke but didn’t think too much of it as we had assumed that they wouldn’t let us into the park if there was a bush fire.  Further down the road we saw a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Fire truck (!!) and they were doing a controlled burn.  So unfortunately for us, this mean that the valley was full of smoke :(. 

Thankfully it was still and when we got past the burn, the sky cleared and we could see the mountains around us.  They were truly spectacular.  We stopped at a clearing and went for a short walk down to a stream.  There we saw three deer! It was so nice that we decided to lunch here.

From there we parked at Yosemite Village and disaster happened – a car drove over my camera and destroyed it L I had got out of the RV to spot for Steve reversing and it had fallen out of my lap when I had got out.  Thankfully the SD card was still functional.  I am still devastated.  Julian kindly offered to share his camera with me xxx.

We took the free Yosemite valley shuttle around the tiny township.  And from the bus we saw a Coyote! 

We were planning on walking to the Lower Yosemite falls but we saw that there was no water at all, so we decided to walk the easy 2mile loop to Mirror Lake.  It wasn’t an easy walk for a 5 year old and Julian ended up with a cut on his elbow and knee.  And then there was no lake at the end, only a dry lake bed.  Worse still was that the smoke had now moved this way and it obliterated the vista and made it hard to breathe.  I was so pleased that Rohan was in the backpack as he has been struggling with the humidity and the smoke/altitude here wouldn’t have helped either.

We got caught the next bus and went back to our RV.  Our destination was only 22km away, but there seems to be a trend developing here and we couldn’t find the RV park (all of this whilst Julian had a nap).  After a bit of back tracking and talking to locals, we found the place 5miles/8km further down the road.  We got in to Indian Flat RV park at about 4:30pm.  It is very barren here and our site has an excellent view of the highway and the entrance to the park :) Also there are only 2 showers which currently have hot water.  And wifi is an extra cost and the bandwidth is pathetic so we didn’t bother.

Dinner was Kantong Chicken with Cashews (simmer sauce bought with us) without the cashews because we forgot to buy them – oops!  Everyone was happy with this one.  After a bit of a muck around, the boys finally had their first shower in the RV.  Nothing exciting except that Rohan put his hands up on the side of the shower cubicle and it looked like he was ready to be frisked!  Both boys in bed before 8pm and Rohan was asleep soon after, Julian took longer.  It also rained tonight.