The Maiden Voyage (Yosemite National Park) [230623-26]
We finally got the chance to take the T42 on her first "real" trip: a long weekend in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite was a good choice for our first time out in this large-to-us vehicle, since we've been tent camping there near-annually for three decades, and know the road between the Bay Area and the Park like the back of our hands. The one route deviation we chose for the trip was to take New Priest Grade instead of the usual Old Priest Grade since we'll probably never try taking the T42 up Old Priest Grade; if you've been up it before, you probably understand why 😉.
We stopped at Tunnel View on the way in for photos. Tom had been hoping to get one of the RV spots in the lower lot - not because we really needed it for the size, but because it would’ve had the best angle for the photo he wanted - but they were all taken so we had to settle for this spot in the upper lot:
The Bridalveil Fall parking area is still closed (they’ve been rebuilding that entire area since late 2019) but we managed to find a parking spot along the main road - with views of El Capitan and Ribbon Falls (had to look that one up - we swear there’s normally no waterfall visible there) to boot.
Crossing the street there linked us up to the Bridalveil Fall footpaths, which look like they’ve been completed as far as the old (?) bridge. We’re not sure what they did exactly, but there’s now a direct unobstructed view from the bridge to the Fall that we’re fairly sure didn’t used to exist:
Some folks had scrambled over the rocks to get out to where the old viewing platform used to be (as far as we could tell, the path out there doesn’t exist any more) but we didn’t feel the need to try that since we could get a perfectly good view without getting wet.
Then it was off to the campsite. Ironically we had booked a new, smaller parking pad site this year (pre-Travato-purchase) instead of one of the usual larger ones that we had continued to book even after Christine's parents had stopped joining us in their RV. The T42 fit fine, though.
Saturday morning we slept in a bit (a testament to the Travato’s sound insulation, since the Yosemite birds usually wake Tom before sunrise when sleeping in the tent; he could faintly hear the ravens cawing, but it wasn’t annoying enough to force him awake). After checking in (since we arrived after the kiosk was closed the previous afternoon), we biked out to Yosemite Falls to walk to the Lower loop trail. The Falls were running very full, as expected:
Inspired by a photo taken by Tom's sister earlier in the summer, we took this one of Christine refilling Tom's water bottle:
We biked back to camp for lunch (passing 3 bucks and a doe grazing by the side of the bike path on the way) and then headed to Happy Isles to start our hike to Vernal Fall. There was much debate about how far up we were going to go this year, but it turns out the trail between Clark Point and the Panorama Trail junction is still closed - so if you want to go to Nevada Fall you can’t do the usual trail loop and you have to take the Mist Trail BOTH ways 😱. That pretty much cinched our decision to just take the Mist Trail to the top of Vernal:
(which was both very wet and very crowded; Christine’s water-resistant-but-not-waterproof jacket was soaked through by the time we made it to the top) and then take the fork to Clark Point so that we could see Nevada Fall without actually hiking all the way there and back.
Nevada was running so full that it was almost unrecognizable. The cascades to the right illustrate why that part of the trail is still closed, as that water has to run across the trail to get to that cliff face!
We took the John Muir Trail back to the junction, rather than deal with the congested Vernal Mist Trail going down (not big fans of being on the cliff side when it’s crowded).
Sunday we biked out to Swinging Bridge. The little side pond that forms there in the spring was still very much there, but between the breeze and the ducks we didn’t get a smooth mirror reflection. The view from the bridge was different this year, with the Merced being so wide that much of the usual beach was underwater.
A side view of the bridge showed how high the river level actually was. We’ve rafted under this bridge several times in the past; not sure we could’ve this year (which is one of the many reasons why watercraft aren’t allowed in the river right now).
From there we biked to Camp 4 to pick up the Yosemite Falls Trailhead. A little over an hour later, we were overlooking the Valley at Columbia Rock:
After which we continued on just far enough until we could see Upper Yosemite Falls.
We had a late lunch, and then spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for the sun to cooperate so that Tom could duplicate this iPhone pano taken earlier in the afternoon on his Nikon:
but eventually gave up and headed back down.
On the way back to camp, we stopped at Sentinel Bridge. They’re doing road construction on Sentinel Drive so it’s closed to auto traffic and we could bike across the bridge roadway itself this year.
Tom was up early Sunday morning so returned to Swinging Bridge to create the next in his series of Time Lapse Videos.
He gravely misjudged what time the sun would finally illuminate the Falls, so this time lapse covers just short of 4 hours (in 29 seconds):
He realized later (when the clothes he had been wearing that morning reeked of smoke) that what he had thought was "ground fog" was really smoke from the controlled burns they had been doing in the Valley.
And of course we had to stop here for one last photo on our way out of the Valley.
All in all, it was a fun and successful trip. Tom showered twice, Christine showered once, and we used the fill/dump station twice (for the practice, since Yosemite is one of the few places in CA where you don't have to pay to dump 😉). We did dishes camp-style the first night (old habits die hard) but used the T42’s sink the rest of the time. Aside from a minor electrical system glitch that we'd have to follow up with Winnebago/Volta on later, everything worked as expected. (We even stopped in Oakdale and heated up leftover grilled pizza in the microwave for lunch on the way home - “because we could” 🙂.)
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