Day 9 - Saturday June, 20 - Yosemite Valley - Part 3
We walked back from the falls and past the visitor center again to fill up our water bottles.
I was sort of reluctant to fill up with the water, most water from parks that I have previously visited tastes a bit funky. It turns out that this water, is pumped out from deep below the valley. That it’s filtered naturally by all the glacial rock deposits. And boy, was it pure and fresh tasting. I filled up all our bottles before we left the next morning, and I coveted that water for the next couple days. LOL.
We also explored the Ansel Adams gallery. Some amazing stuff in there!!! And then, we hit the main gift shop. It was more like a small Wal-Mart or something. This place was huge. I ended up getting a couple cool Yosemite T-shirts.
Eventually, we hopped on the shuttle and headed over to the Ahwahnee. This is the main lodge in Yosemite. I’m a sucker for this type of architecture. Probably why the Wilderness Lodge is my favorite place to stay in WDW and why I love exploring the Grand Californian (although we’ve never stayed there.)
I took thousands of photos on this vacation, and why didn’t I take any of the lodge outside?!?!? It was spectacular. Anyway, I did get a few photos of the inside so, here we go.
You enter through a long corridor, which now makes the main entrance to the Grand Californian seem a little less strange to me.
I expected to see a big open lobby, but the main lobby was somewhat underwhelming.
Hey look, a little snack/gift shop. Let’s see if they have any ice cream!
They did! We split and ice cream cookie sandwich and then headed outside to enjoy it.
The lawn area on the back patio was amazing.
OK. There’s clearly more than meets the eye here, let’s go back in and explore!
We stumbled upon the main social area. This is more like what I expected to see when we first entered!
Amazing details from floor to ceilling.
Next up, we found the main restaurant.
Too bad we didn’t have reservations!!! And I’m sure the kids would have been disappointed for us to leave them hanging for dinner too!!! With that in mind, we decided to wrap it up and head back to Curry Village.
We guessed that the rest of the family would still be at the pool, and luckily we caught them just as they were drying off.
And then we all headed back to the cabins.
While the kids were all getting changed, I headed back to the center of camp to scout out our dinner options.
Turns out that there were three main options.
#1. A window-based joint that focused on burgers and sandwiches.
#2. The pizza place.
#3. The main dining cafeteria.
The main dining cafeteria actually looked pretty good. But the kids thought the food was too much for grown ups. (They were probably right. But still…)
Anyway, I did a little more exploring before I headed back to sharing my findings. They had an outdoor stage/pavilion for shows and events.
And then a common room with games and stuff. Oh, and the only wifi in the area. Which is HUGE because we had no cell coverage. (The lack of cell coverage was torture for Princess. Oh my gosh, 1.5 days off the grid?!?!?!)
Lots of rocking chairs on the porch.
OK. Time to head back to the cabins.
Passing the parking lot again. What a view!
Passing more of those tents...
So happy that we didn’t have to stay in one of those. They are so close to each other, and if you were unlucky enough to be next to a loud/obnoxious group, you would be out of luck!!
And then I found Buddy chilling by the giant rock across from our cabin.
After sharing the findings from my recon, we agreed that the "window grill” (I forget what it was called) was the best fit for everyone. (Except for Dave, Angie, and their kids decided to head over to see what options were available over by the Yosemite Hotel and visitors center.)
You ordered from the window, and then grabbed a table.
So what did we think? Well, it was decent. Considering the location and all that. Not amazing, but not terrible either.
Buddy is pretty much always chicken and fries, when he can have them. (Strangely at home, he’s the healthiest eater of all three of our kids.)
Princess went for a grilled chicken sandwich on ciabatta. She liked it well enough.
Stephanie went for the salmon burger. Which she didn’t really like at all. (And she loves salmon.)
I went for this bacon and onion hot dog thingy. I lucked out, because despite how it looked, it was incredibly tasty!!
Oh, and their gift shop/grocery was next door. I went in and grabbed a couple cold beers!!!
I had never heard of this stuff before, but boy was it tasty after a long day in the Valley!
So after dinner, Princess really wanted to go spend some time on the wifi, but didn’t want to go alone. So I took my beers with me and we rocked in the rocking chairs for a long, long time. It was really nice. And I caught up on Facebook and a few work related emails too. Eventually, it got dark and we decided to head back for the night.
In the meantime, Stephanie and the younger kids went back to take showers and get organized. Our goal was to leave at 5am the next morning… As we had a date with Walt’s Barn and hoped to meet Bob Gurr. Didn’t want to take any chances of traffic or an accident making us late!!!
What a spectacular day. And good night moon!
Oh and one last thing, I mentioned that we usually get pins for the kids at major destinations. Here are the Yosemite pins that we picked up.
Stay tuned, because we arrive in Anaheim tomorrow!!!
We only scratched the surface of Yosemite. I can't wait to do a dedicated trip there!
This a bit off topic, but I'm beyond excited right now...
