Yosemite Vacation

We spent a week camping at Yosemite National Park. We had the most beautiful campsite in the mountains (at 9,500 feet) with a creek running right behind our site. We arrived on Monday evening after we spent the morning in doctors offices getting Lauren's foot taken care of. The views were beautiful with snow in the surrounding mountains. It got pretty chilly at night because of the elevation. It was down in the 30's at night and in the 60's during the day. We have very warm sleeping bags so we stayed nice and warm. The hardest part was that we all got elevation sickness for the first day and a half. At that altitude, you don't have as much oxygen to breathe so it takes some time for your body to adjust. You also have to drink more water than normal because you can dehydrate much faster. We spent our days hiking and enjoying the beauty of Yosemite. The many waterfalls are such a beautiful sight and the grassy meadows are just amazing. We climbed to the top of a couple of the domes (Lembert Dome and Pothole Dome) and when you reach the top, you can see for miles. The scary thing is that if you trip or take a bad step, you could fall and that would be the end. Once we got to the top of Lembert Dome which was the higher of the two and the more dangerous, we made the girls sit and not move while we took a few pictures. The views were just amazing. We got to see some rock climbers on El Capitan. It takes them 5-7 days to climb to the top. It was really neat to see all the stuff they take up and the platform that they sleep on at night. We were able to see them really close with our binoculars. I am not afraid of heights and love to do wild and crazy things, but I don't think I could handle hanging from a rope for a week on the side of a big rock mountain. It was nice to have the whole week and not feel rushed to try and see everything. We did see a bear and thankfully it was not at our camp site. If you have never camped in bear country before, you soon learn that you have to lock up all your food in these big metal boxes because the bears will break into vehicles. There are between 500 and 600 bears in Yosemite. Over 100 vehicles get broken into every year at Yosemite by bears because of people not properly storing their food. We have a really nice camping grill and were able to fix all of our meals camp style. There were two other families with us and we took turns preparing the meals. All the kids (13 of them) loved playing down by the creek. They even named their favorite spot "The Bush". If you ever get a chance to visit Yosemite National Park, I would highly recommend it. It was the first National Park in our country and it has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. We are looking forward to our next camping trip coming up next weekend. We are going to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.

We took over 400 pictures while visiting Yosemite. I had a hard time just choosing a few to post so I attached a slide show with the majority of the pictures included. If you click on the picture it will take you to my actual smugmug photo album where you can view them more quickly.