Camping in Yosemite

We live in campgrounds full time but we don't feel like we are camping. We are at home. We have all our belongings, hot water, air conditioning and an oven. So we enjoy going on camping trips, which in our case means leaving one campground (where we have our RV home parked) to travel to another campground, where we set up a tent or sleep in our truck.

This last week we found some last minute availability to camp at the Upper Pines campground in Yosemite Valley. We parked, set up camp and didn't drive our truck at all until it was time to leave. We hopped on our bikes and biked around the valley again, admiring the views and dodging crowds. We biked to Yosemite Falls, ditching our bikes and hiking the last section. We stopped in the stores in each of the villages, hoping to find a box of graham crackers for less than $7 and settled on maple cookies for our s'mores instead.

For dinner we biked from our campground to nearby Curry Village to grab pizza and beers at Pizza Deck. We got in line right before the dinner rush, sat outside in the sunshine gazing at the towering cliffs all around us and devoured cheesy garlic bread and chicken pesto pizza.

We made a campfire (something we rarely do at our full time campgrounds, typically only with friends), roasted marshmallows and made maple cookie smores which may be even better than graham crackers. The boys slept in the truck, J in the bed of the truck and C in the cab across the backseats and joked that they finally had their own rooms since they share a room in our trailer. Sam and I slept on our ridiculously huge and comfortable car camping mattress in our tent and we all slept spectacularly well.

The next morning we started early on the Mist Trail, accessing the trailhead from our campground, which only added about 1 mile total to our hike. The hike starts off steep and gets even steeper as you reach Vernal Fall. The trail to the top of Vernal Fall takes you on over 600 granite steps. We picked the top of Vernal Fall as our turn around spot but the trail continues on to Nevada Fall. The trail is true to its name: you will get misted with waterfall spray as you hike the steps along Vernal Fall. We saw many other hikers wearing ponchos and rain jackets, covering their packs with rain covers and trash bags, but we found the mist to be light and we dried within a few minutes. The top of Vernal Fall has a large swath of smooth, dry granite, perfect for a snack before the hike down.

On our hike back down we stopped along the trail to let the kids climb and scramble-- we watched the Dawn Wall last week and they have been inspired by the climbing accomplishments of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson. Back at camp we packed up our tent and sleeping bags, then headed out of Yosemite Valley and back home to our other campground.