I came home from Yosemite with some mixed feelings about the trip — mostly good feelings but also some strange ones. I guess if I go in depth with each point I have, this post is going to be a pretty long one, so I will just give it a quick dry run and revisit some of them sometime in the future… I posted some images from the trip.
>> Lodging
Curry Village
Pros: Relatively clean tents; relatively rule-respecting crowd; heating provided in some tents when it gets cold; relatively comfy mattresses; electricity outlets; 24×7 shower.
Cons: Extremely poor facility for cooking; expect to dine at on-site commercial dinning facilities or cook on top of bear-proof lockers which is extremely inconvenient; extremely LONG lines for almost everything — parking, front desk check-in, dinning… etc. Small and expensive rooms, but then every lodging facility there is expensive; tiny bear-proof lockers; can be very difficult to find parking; EXTREMELY CROWDED — feels more like a cheap, 3rd class tourist area.
Housekeeping Camp
Pros: Great on-site cooking facility (provided if you bring your own portable stove; Grace has even seen people bring microwaves!!); literally walking access to mountain and river views; lots of open space; lots of returning families here every year; easy parking (drive almost right up to your tent!); short lines for everything. Feels more like “camping” and closer to nature (except for the “cons” below). Cheap.
Cons: Relatively dirty facilities; loud and annoying crowd (LOTS of kids and “red necks” blasting loud MUSIC! Yes, music in the middle of nature! Idiots!); limited shower and bathroom hours; lousy bunk beds; VERY hard to fall asleep at night because some people stay up with loud voices (including kids at 12AM).
>> Traffic
The traffic both to and from the park are pretty nice. The only traffic jam we experienced was at the entrance of the park where everyone paid for entrance fees. Also, there’s no easily accessible gas station within the park itself; so gas up before you enter the park!
Overall traffic in the so-called Yosemite Village is excellent. Almost everybody takes the free shuttle to get around (which are supposedly made just for national parks to keep emissions low). The shuttles are very frequent and drivers friendly (and some of them humorous). But parking is probably as bad as New York City…
>> People
It seems like there are lots of people who visit the park quite often. We talked to a few families who go back to Yosemite every year as a family tradition. And contrary to what Chee-hoi says about the “Asian crowd”, I heard a lot more French and British-English speaking people than any other ethnic groups. Unfortunately smoking is not banned in the park. It was very annoying and frustrating to see smokers almost everywhere (and lots of cigarette butts!). But mostly people are considerate and nice to each other.
>> Scenes
There’s only one word for the sceneries: Majestic. There are lots of breathtaking scenes no matter what angle you look at them from. It’s no wonder that John Muir lobbied hard to keep Yosemite a protected American treasure. The only regret I had was that we simply didn’t have time to see everything; there’s simply too much to see just within car-accessible parts of the park! It’s probably wise to plan for a longer trip (like one week) if you plan on spending more time at each spot and truly really appreciate everything.
>> Food
Unless you are camping and bringing your own meals, food can be a serious issue. There are only a few spots where you can have a nice meal. The good news is, food served by the commercial vendors are comparable to your neighborhood service providers both in quality and price.
>> Bryan
Bryan did pretty well considering how long the trip was (both the drives and the duration away from home). He cried about 20% of the time in the car having never been in a car for so damn long. So it wasn’t too bad. He also slept fairly well except at Housekeeping Camp where there were lots of loud people staying up way into the night despite of “quiet hours” imposed by the camp. But nobody cares (even though we did). It is always better to travel using personal cars rather than renting one out. Companies like wowloans are helping people make this dream come true by providing instant car loans.
Before going on the trip, I taught Bryan how to growl back to bear if we ever ran into one at the park (not sure if he understood all that, but he got the growling down). During the trip, he learned that the growling sound goes with the Mandarin word “bear”. So now if we asked where “the bear” was, he’d immediately show off by growling like a bear (which is extremely funny).
