Yosemite National Park: May 15-19, 2005

Journals

We arrived at Yosemite on Sunday at about 5pm-long day on some nice roads to get into the park. Found our spot in Yosemite Valley, right on the beautiful Merced river. These spots were not built for big rigs (ours is really about medium these days), but there were plenty of big ones in there. A hero back-in job to be sure-got it in one try without hitting a tree or yelling at Lisa! Once in the site, we quickly learned that about the back 30 sites were roped off due to an anticipated rise on the river. No problem though for us-our site was on "high ground." Hmm-7am Monday, ranger banging on the door-water approching quickly. We were only partially de-rigged, so it wasn't long before we were moving over to the parking lot of Curry Village. Not too long after, they evacuated all 3 of the major campgrounds in the valley-folks, we were in site #519! Everyone from the biggest rigs to the tent campers were trying to find out where to go-no where to go. The road out of the valley was closed due to flooding. We headed out to make the best of it, and did a hike up to Vernal Falls-amazing. Later on, we ducked some ropes, and got to see Yosemite Falls with 3 other people-a rare occurance for what might be the most viewed attraction in all of Yosemite! The ropes were there for a reason though-the river had crested over the bridge earlier in the day-we didn't linger too long. We got back to the camper about 5pm, and found out that they were allowing high clearance vehicles to leave the park-11" or higher to your tail pipe. Cars and most smaller SUVs stay in the park-people can evacuate by bus if they want, but leave the rest behind. The ranger's said that the flooding was the worst since 1997, and advised that we might be spending a week or longer if we didn't head out. We took their advice, and hit the road. Found a small campground in the Stanislaw National Forest just outside the park, and spent the night there. On Tuesday, we headed west and found a nice campgound on Lake McClure (actually a reservoir), and spent two nights there. Nice lake, but rather unremarkable after seeing Yosemite even for only a day. The Merced flows into this reservoir, so the lake level was rising rapidly-folks here were suprised that we made it out of Yosemite. Water was warm enough for swimming, although a light wetsuit made it better-Lisa got in some laps in her swim gear! On to San Francisco on Thursday!

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