I didn't realize I never talked about Yosemite, but I suppose things have been all over the place for awhile.
Avid camper as she is, my mom has been begging us to join her to Yosemite for forever, and while I honestly I probably would have kept putting it off, we had the time for Sophie's April break and no excuses left (ha) so we finally made the trek with her last month.
The trip was actually great! The long drive wasn't as bad as I had anticipated with the two little ones, but we had a few moments. Sophie puked on the drive up, about 20 minutes away from our Curry Village campsite at Housekeeping, had one rough meltdown on the drive home before she finally passed out in her car seat, and on one particularly long and tiresome stretch along the grapevine, while Sophie and AJ slept and I fought my fatigue, Summer spent (I'm not joking) about an hour straight saying "Mama! Mama!" until I said "Yes?" and she would say "Cuck!" as she pointed out every. single. truck. that drove by hahaha. It was annoying but also super cute, especially because she's less verbal than Sophie and I didn't want to discourage her pride at utilizing her new vocabulary.
I feel like the trip was partly made as great as it was by our amazing camp site. Our issued spots were RIGHT along the river, with nothing between us and nature, so that we got to wake up and have nothing but a great front porch of room to run and walk right down to the river beach, unobstructed views of the river, the cliff sides, and Yosemite Falls waterfall.
Gangy and Grandpa Jim had all the camping bells and whistles and saved us more than once (how did AJ and I forget our own sleeping bags and blankets?) and we started morning off with hot breakfasts, spent days hiking, playing in the river, going to ranger talks and flying kites, and the evenings roasting s'mores, watching our rainbow fire burn, and stargazing. It had been years since I had seen so many stars! It did get freakily dark (turning our flashlights off made me nervous for a hot second and you really had to concentrate to not think about bears lol) and the whole bear box situation was certainly something but we all survived!
The neatest part about Yosemite was how... accurate it was. The pictures that you see are exactly what you get. It's not well-angled photos or specific slivers. The whole valley is just breathtakingly beautiful, well-maintained and not overdone or over-developed, and I think I was starting to believe such beautiful nature existed only in pictures anymore. I haven't seen much of the national parks, but Yosemite's valley- the cliffs, the river, trees, waterfalls, nature, etc seem so unique from anywhere else.
The girls had a great time and are amazingly still so attached to the stuffed black bears that Gangy bought them on night one.
As fun as the trip was (and I'm sure there are more in the future) - maybe nothing felt as great as getting those girls in a bath immediately upon arrival home!
