Lucky Teardrop Camping in Yosemite

Today Yosemite is celebrating its 123rd anniversary...and immediately had to shut its gates because of the federal government shutdown. We were lucky enough to make it down to the park this last weekend for a teardrop camping trip just outside of this beautiful park. We are also very lucky that one of the most popular parks in the U.S. is only a three hour drive south of our home, so a quick weekend away is easy. So for anyone who is not able to visit the park today (but hopefully soon), here's what we did last weekend.

We took the teardrop out with her best friend, the Stargazers teardrop trailer, and our good friends, Brett and Nancy. On the way down, we stopped at Travertine Hot Springs in Bridgeport to warm up. It was nice for the first two days down in Yosemite, but a day before the area had received a few inches of snow and we were expecting colder temperatures. We also stopped at the Whoa Nellie Deli for lunch. If you have not been there, it's a Mobil gas station that serves some really excellent food including seared ahi and bison meatloaf.

 

Usually when we come down to this area, we stay in Forest Service campgrounds, but we decided to check and see if there was availability at Aspen Campground at the entrance to Tioga Pass. We were so lucky this day: we got a large spot right by the waterfall. The campground soon filled up around us, but we pretty much had the waterfall area to ourselves. The days were beautiful, but the nights got down into the 30s and the 12-volt blanket came in handy.

 

 

The next day we drove in Yosemite and were lucky again. It turned out that it was Public Lands Day and we were able to get into the park for free. We did give some money to the Yosemite Conservancy to continue our good karma. We drove along Highway 120 and stopped at a few places including Olmstead Point on our way to Glacier Point. I had not been to Yosemite for several years and it was nice to see that the horrible Rim Fire had not touched many of the places that make Yosemite famous, however, because of the fire cleanup — the entire northwest part of the park was closed.

We drove to Glacier Point and spent most of the day there, walking around, eating lunch overlooking Half Dome and looking down into Yosemite Valley (which we decided to avoid because of the traffic).

 

At the campground, we did some hiking around the aspens and some Dutch oven cooking around the fire. I made BBQ chicken and Thai squash and our friends made pulled pork sandwiches and a really excellent Dutch oven chocolate cake.

The day we left, the bad weather decided to come in and the cold wind began to sweep through the campsite as we were making breakfast and packing up. Chairs, clothes, shelter and paper towels flew around before were were able to get them into the cars...I think our luck had just run out.