Friday Teardrop Photo

This teardrop trailer is available as a rental on Airbnb. Located in Mariposa and close to Yosemite National Park, the owner allows the trailer to be towed to a nearby site or guests can sleep in the trailer on her land.

Friday Teardrop Photo

The Sunflower and the Stargazers teardrop trailer (with a nice set of Tibetan prayer flags) set up camp near the entrance to Yosemite National Park. Because of the uneven ground, chocks and rocks came in handy.

Friday Teardrop Photo

The Sunflower in front of Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra of California. This ancient lake was nearly drained by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power who used the lake's water for southern California agriculture and homes. The lake is now back to its 1919 level thanks to the Mono Lake Committee, and is home to a great visitor center, flocks of water birds and ghostly towers of tufa rock.

It's one of our favorite places to stop with the teardrop trailer.

Friday Teardrop Photo

The Sunflower and the Stargazers teardrop at a gas station and snack stop in Bridgeport, California. We tend to stop at this station nearly every time we drive Highway 395 South and attract some attention in this small town.

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.

 

Friday Teardrop Photo

We are heading down to Yosemite for a long teardrop camping weekend. This photo just goes to show that both this beautiful park and teardrops go together pretty well.

Photo by peakbagging