Yet again we had hoped for an early start, but it seems it’s not possible. I heard the people next door to us leaving sometime around 6am, and it turns out that’s when we should have left if we wanted to enjoy Yosemite properly!
We were only about 72 kms / 45 miles from Yosemite Valley, but it’s a drive along quite narrow and winding roads with steep hills both up and down. But, I have to say that I wasn’t having any problems at all driving Al, and managed very well. Leland actually asked at one point today or yesterday whether I was a truck driver back in the UK and hadn’t told them about it!! I just enjoy driving bigger vehicles 🙂
Anyway, as we approached the entrance gate we hit our first queue of the day. After showing our pass we continued on our way. Traffic was flowing past here as some cars were going to Mariposa Grove – a road that we can’t take Al on, but that Müfit and I went to last time we visited Yosemite in 2008. We did drive past the Wawona Hotel which is where I stayed with mum, dad, Mark, nan and grandad in 1989 on our California trip – it now seems to be called Big Trees Lodge which is strange as it’s a historic building that you would have thought they’d keep the name of.
The next obstacle was Wawona Tunnel. It’s a long tunnel that you have to go through. We had been worrying about this last night as I had looked up a few things and seen that there are restrictions for height, but they only give the ‘curb’ height of the tunnel which is just over 10 feet. Al is 12’5″ with the air conditioning unit, but it seems that if you drive next to the centre line, you should be just fine, and we were.
Finally you wind your way down towards Yosemite Valley which is where the main campgrounds, visitor centre, and main scenic attractions are, and this is also where we stopped and joined a very long line of traffic. We spent the next hour driving through, being shepherded in only the direction they wanted everyone to go, and then trying it all over again around the one way system, only to find that it would be near impossible to get a space for a car, and beyond impossible to find anywhere that we could park Al. In the end, we stopped in a pull-out / lay-by which was several miles from the main village area. It was hot – hotter than we had expected it to be – so we couldn’t walk that far with the dogs, but we couldn’t leave the dogs in Al as they would bake. If we didn’t have the dogs with us, we could have got on the village shuttle bus right near where we had parked, but they don’t allow dogs so we couldn’t do that either.
We had to settle for having seen the best scenery from Al. After all, with such a massive windscreen you do get a pretty good view from inside, and this was one of the main buying points for us when we bought Al. So we had lunch, then walked across the road to an area where we could just wander around a bit and let the dogs off leash without anyone seeing 😉, then went back to the RV. We decided, as it was coming up for 3pm, that we’d give it another try, and drove back in towards the village to see if there was any hope of finding a space, but no, there wasn’t.
So, we ended up leaving Yosemite far earlier than we had planned to, and quite annoyed and frustrated. They encourage you to use their shuttle bus, but you can only us their shuttle bus if you can first park your vehicle. We really should have got there about 7am and then maybe, just maybe we could have found a space. But if it’s difficult for cars, think how difficult it is to park a 32′ RV – basically there’s nowhere. And isn’t this kind of stupid? If we’d been able to camp in Yosemite we would have been ok, but we hadn’t realised that you have a timeframe of about 10 seconds in which to book from when your date is released to when it fills up – I’m not joking!
Oh well, at least we got to see it, and the kids got to see it. We headed to our RV park, outside of Yosemite and via some more steep, winding roads, and got there at a sensible time. We’re staying here, Yosemite Pines RV Resort, just outside of Groveland, for 2 nights.
Bolgil Family Adventures 