Adventure Vacations with the Yelton Family: Day 23 ~ Driving to Yosemite

Day 23 ~ Traveling to Yosemite

We left peaceful Coleville KOA early today in order to make it to church near Yosemite, as today is Sunday. We tried to go to church last night on our way back from Bodie, but the Catholic Church near Coleville only had Mass at 3:00 Eastern Time. So we knew it would be better to get up early and get to our next stop instead of waiting until late in the afternoon to start our journey like last Sunday.

We are using our atlas combined with Google Driving Directions with a smattering of Mike’s phone GPS thrown in. The atlas is accurate, if you can see the print……but of course, never gives an estimate of how long it takes to drive to a point. It is impossible to estimate because of the mountains. So we use Google for specific streets and time estimates. Apparently, Google has never driven the mountains either because their times are always wayyyyyy wrong in the mountains.

An hour into the journey to Yosemite, we had a funny feeling we weren’t going to make it anywhere fast……Throughout California, every traveling day has been fraught with hairpin turns and steep mountain grades. Very picturesque, but you just can’t plan to get anywhere fast. Today, we had the worst twisty turny roads and steep grades. Biggest grade we had done so far was 12%...... And that is pretty bad......Today we had a 26% mountain grade! Mike tried his heart out, but we didn’t make it to church in time. It was impossible.

We are in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Remember this picture from a few days ago……

Now we are on top of that mountain!

The Mariposa KOA is “Big and Fancy”, which is usually not our cup of tea. It does have woods around it, which is nice, but these big campgrounds keep parking us by the playground, probably because we have “children” on our bill. Screaming and yelling. All. Night. Long. Well, at least until midnight our time. Additionally, the bathrooms are a crapbag. Not clean. Hair, filth, and mud in the showers. Moldy shower curtain. Of course, I dropped my fresh clean towel in on the floor in the cesspool. Cleanest, freshest towel I have had for 10 days! And the laundry room is locked…..and will be locked during the hours we are at our campsite for the next 3 nights. And while I am griping…..I feel like we are experts on what a good campground needs in the bathroom department now……The sinks have automatic thingy-s to turn the water on by waving your hand under them. It is hard to hit them in just the right spot to make them come one…..very inconvenient when brushing teeth, washing faces, or wetting down hair. And the water is cold. Blah!

There is a kitchen sink, which is usually helpful, but it doesn’t have hot water……not helpful. So we will have to boil water for dishes, anyway.

Plus, Yosemite is an hour away….That is going to be a pain because we will have to drive for 2 hours each day just to go to the park. Blah.

Since Yosemite is so far away and we arrived so late, we just had our grape juice meal with garlic bread, pesto, olives, cheese, and cherries. We played Euchre while we ate. After all, that is why we had 2 kids, so we would have an instant table for Euchre on any day of the week! Then we finished up the cherries with a pit spitting contest! Way fun! Harrison won hands down.