Yosemite: another unplanned adventure

In my life, one thing is always true—uncertainty is certain. Think in terms of heading out for pizza and ending up having one heck of a meal at the sushi bar. This is how I spent a recent weekend, and now you get to read all about it. A trip to Yosemite, that is, not pizza or sushi.

Every year at the end of April or thereabouts, I spend the better part of a day out at the Ojai Valley Gun Club with a few friends, and we enjoy some shootin', some eatin', and just a good time with the boys. (Actually, girls are more than welcome to attend, but we can't find any who'll go with us.)

When I got back on Saturday afternoon, no one was home. I assumed that Lori had taken off to Yosemite for something called the Moonbow. That's a natural phenomenon where the bright full moon generates a rainbow of colors in the mist over one of the waterfalls in Yosemite. She had mentioned going, so when I saw that Diana's car was gone, I assumed she had in fact gone to Yosemite. (Lori's car had a problem with the radiator, making it less than roadworthy, so taking a 600-mile or more trip would have been somewhat risky.) Having gotten up at 6:30am for the Ojai event, I was pretty tired so I sat down and promptly fell asleep.

Around 4:30, I was awakened by the front door opening. Diana was away for the weekend, so it had to be Lori coming in. With the Moonbow just six or seven hours away, I didn't understand why she hadn't yet gotten on the road, being that it takes six hours just to drive to Yosemite, let alone getting to the spot in the park where the Moonbow was visible. She said that she was still debating as to whether to go, and the next thing I knew, we were putting together stuff for both of us to spend the night if need be.

Honestly, I hadn't planned on taking such a trip, but it looked like once again, I was going to Yosemite. My last trip to Yosemite in 2013 was sort of spur-of-the-moment. Read about that here.

We piled everything into Diana's car and got set to go. We could have just as well taken my car, but since our neighbors think the space in front of our house is an overflow lot for their multitude of vehicles, we decided to let my car be a placeholder. (The neighbor thing is a story in itself. Another blog entry, perhaps?)

Like our last trip, we headed up I-5 over the Grapevine and landed in the Central Valley. Being dinnertime, we looked for somewhere to eat and were surprised to find The Habit in a shopping center in Wheeler Ridge. Saying this may offend the In-N-Out fans out there, but I think The Habit has a better burger. Just my 'pinion.

Back on the road, we continued our northward journey. By the time we got to Yosemite, it was past midnight and the Moonbow was long since over. But here we were, at Yosemite National Park at almost the middle of the night, so it was time to find somewhere to stay. We'd made our way to Camp Curry Half Dome Village. The folks at Aramark were kind enough to take over all of the concessions and lodging at Yosemite, so they've gone around changing the names of some very famous places, including the landmark Ahwahnee Hotel, which dates to 1927. (It's now known as the Majestic Yosemite Hotel). Completely stupid in my opinion.

Note that in the last paragraph I struck out "Camp Curry" and replaced it with "Half Dome Village." Same idea. Here's a picture of the soon-to-be-modified sign with a temporary sign tied over it:

Anyway, we stopped in at the check-in desk lodging availability counter to see if any of the tent cabins were available. We were surprised to learn that Cabin 691 was free of guests and that we could have it. The next trick was to find a place to park close to where our cabin was, as well as finding it in the middle of the night. We found ours, and it was just 100 feet from the restrooms. You can't complain about that.

For some reason, I didn't take a picture of good ol' 691. But I did find a picture online of the tent cabins:

 

As accommodations go, these really aren't too bad. The bunk inside is reasonably comfy, there's a heater in most of the tents, a chair, some shelves, and a light with a pull chain. Our light didn't work, but Lori had brought a battery-powered light that she hung from the ceiling. We were well lit.

By the time we got to bed it was just after 2am, which is about when we usually get to bed at home. For reasons unknown to me, I woke up sometime between 6 and 7. After we both were up, washed up, dressed and ready to go, we headed over to the restaurant for breakfast.

Not the World's Greatest Breakfast™ or anything, but not too bad either. We walked all over Half Dome Village taking in the blooming dogwood trees with their white, pink, yellow, and magenta flowers.

A quick stop in the gift shop and packing up our stuff to check out concluded our morning, and we decided to head on out. Of course leaving Yosemite isn't just a matter of ZOOOM!!! out of the park. We took our time to take in as much as we could.

Shamefully, I didn't take many pictures at Yosemite. But I made up for it at our next stop.

By about 11:30, we were checked out, cleaned out, and on our way back down Highway 41. The last time we came up here, I noticed a sign for something called the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. Being the railfan that I am, I was surprised that I'd never heard of it. At that time it was closed, but I'd always planned to get back up there and ride it. Since we were in the vicinity once again—and it was open—here was a chance to check it out.

A Reader's Digest description of this railroad: it's about four miles of track with a 500-foot difference in elevation that was once used to help transport logs from where the trees were cut to where they were loaded into a flume for their trip to the sawmill. Locomotives used on these trains are built by Shay. Steam-powered like the familiar ones seen all over, but a different mechanical configuration enabled all of the wheels to drive the train. Because of that, Shay locomotives were used wherever lots of power and torque were needed. Climbing steep grades with heavy loads made these ideal to do the job. Here's a video of one passing by the depot:



To protect your sanity and keep your eyes open, I won't get too technical about the equipment used on this line, but I'll throw in a few things just to make sure you're still reading. If you really want to get into the technical stuff, visit the YMSP Railroad page on Wikipedia. But I did take some good photos here.

One thing that I noticed right away was how they used real logs for the sides of some of the passenger cars, and cut about a quarter of them away to form seats.



Plenty of room for passengers, and with two or three of these cars on the train, there'll be a lot of people going into the woods. When we boarded, we chose to sit outside, which meant sitting on these logs.

Heading into the woods, there was a lot to see. Plenty of trees and flowers, but no sign of wildlife (at least we didn't see anything).

We made a 15-minute stop about halfway through the ride so that the crew could add water to the locomotive.

Get offa there, you!!! Oh...wait...that's the engineer. Never mind...

Once we resumed, it didn't take long to return to the depot. When we got off the train, we picked up a brochure for this railroad and headed south again on Highway 41. Like last time, we stopped at Bravo Farms in Traver to get stuff we don't need, then back on 99 for home.

Diana got home not long after we did, and we exchanged tales from our respective weekend activities.

When unexpected activities arise, they can be stressful, but this one turned out to be a lot of fun.