A soggy ride to Yosemite

 

Yosemite Valley is wet! That's not surprising given the forecast. We drove from home to Groveland in the non-stop rain. The sky was a somber gray blanket without even a hint of blue. The soggy skies dumped water on us but was stayed warm and cozy inside the cockpit of the Tiffany Blue Mini. The music's playing was all but drowned by the noise of the rain on the windshield.

Last time I went through Groveland, I went through it, I didn't stop. This time we did. We were hungry. It was late morning and we hadn't eaten anything since the night before. We stopped in the middle of town where an older gentleman in a red hat was standing in the rain and said we were hoping for breakfast. He pointed across the street and said they have the best breakfast in town. They did have a good breakfast. I had Black Bart's Breakfast because it sounded good on the menu and it was kinda fun to ask for it. When it came I are it as fast as I could hoping I would finish before Black Bart showed up to gun me down.

After brunch we headed on to the entrance of Yosemite Park arriving there around lunch time. The ranger in the kiosk asked me if I had snow chains. "Uh, no", I stammered. "Chains are required to enter the park," she said. "What about if we drive around the the highway 140 entrance?" I asked. "Oh, no there are no chains required there." 

So she was telling a half truth. Apparently a group of five cars decided to do some square dancing in the snow so even if you had chains you had to wait until they unhooked all the pieces of twisted metal. We opted for the scenic bypass and headed back down the road we just came up.

It was a little disappointing to be looking at the same scenery from the opposite direction. But we were moving and we were on an adventure. You are supposed to have obstacles on adventures, that's what makes them adventures. 

We finally arrived at the park in the middle of the afternoon. It had been raining the whole time. In fact it's still raining as I write this before I turn out the lights. The temperature has been dropping all afternoon and we decided that rather than walking in the rain, which was our original plan, we'd drive around to the village. After the big breakfast we had eaten neither of us were hungry so we wandered through the store looking at shirt that said, "I made it to the top!" But you can buy them in the valley. If you ever see someone with one of those shirts, they're probably lying, they spent the day shopping for teeshirts, not climbing Half Dome.

We went into the theater where they show a movie about Yosemite every thirty minutes. 

We arrived in the middle of the movie. It was warm, and dark... We both had a very comfortable forty five minute nap. The only the I remember from the movie was something about the spirit of Yosemite.

We made trail brownies back at our housekeeping campsite before tucking ourselves snugly into goose down while the heavy rain pounds harshly on the heavy canvas roof of our shelter. We have a site right next to the river. 

So many people canceled we basically got one of the choice spots in the camp.

The rain seems to be quieting down. I would venture a guess the it's turning to snow. We are looking forward to tomorrow hopefully the storm will have gotten tired of dumping water since it's been doing in now nonstop for over twelve hours.