Have 5er will travel: 9. Day 2 in Yosemite

After another morning of sleeping in and waiting for the sun to come through the trees, I spend a lot of time walking through both Lower Pines and Uppers Pines campgrounds evaluating/prioritizing sites for future camping trips to Yosemite. While on my walk Janna stayed back in camp doing her favorite aerobic exercise…reading.

The first thing I did was to stop by the RV dump station in Upper Pines to get a feel for what was there so I would be prepared when it was time for us to check-out, dump our tanks, and leave. I had my campground map in hand from when we checked in, and as I entered the campground I looked up saw this very handsome coyote walking right toward me. He was almost past me by the time I got the camera off my shoulder and got off a shot.

As I walked around the various loops checking for length/width of driveways, proximity to restrooms and trash/recycle stations (the further away the better), and closeness to neighbors (anti-social!) I had a couple other fun interactions with nature.

The first was a couple of ground squirrels that had somehow managed to get a roll of paper towels on the ground and were stuffing their cheeks full like there was no tomorrow. Very funny. I can only imagine what those people would think hit their camp when they got back. And it cracked me up that there was a lady in a camp site right across the road that was just standing there watching the show.

A little further up the road on another loop there were several big ravens going to town on stuff people had left out in their camp. Sure made me make sure we put away anything that 1) first would attract the birds and 2) anything they could carry off…because they will!)

The result of my expedition to Upper Pines was that I determined that out of the 240 total campsites there, there were only 47 that we either could (due to driveway length/width) and would want (location, location, location). Lower Pines had a little better ratio. There are 74 total sites there and 36 of those would work (some much better than others!)

After I got back to camp (3:30 ish) I started a fire for Janna and then headed out to the river and down through the portion of Lower Pines that is now closed (and where our favorite sites used to be!) As a kid I used to love playing around Sugar Pine Bridge and as a family we spent a lot of time at the sandy beach there, laying in the sun or rafting in the river.

With sun starting to set it was really beautiful walking back to camp along the meadow we also spent so much time playing in as kids and watching the Fire Fall from Glacier Point. Now the meadow is ‘off limits’ except for the wood path that allows campers to take a short cut over to Camp Curry.

Then it was back to camp for my favorite 5 hours of camping; Happy Hour, BBQ'ing, eating, doing dishes out by the fire, and then having cocoa and nutter butters. Hmm, hmm, hmm.