Good Yosemite - Bad Yosemite

We finally made it to Yosemite!!   We drove the New Priest Road (purple) up Hwy 120 to the city of Groveland.  The most curvy, elevation increasing road we have ever seen.  Not sure who named it but my prayers were going up the entire time, but I sent them straight to God.  There is an Old Priest Road (Red) but it does not contain as many curves, just goes UP.  Not for RV's or large vehicles!  Our good friends from Fort Atkinson came to visit with us for the week in Yosemite.  John & Kim Kempf.  We had a great time checking out Yosemite.  Behind us on the left is El Capitan the ginormous granate mountain.  Off in the distance is a very tiny bump that is Half Dome.  The picture below shows a bigger version. But it's ginormous too.  2 of the iconic famous rocks of Yosemite.

We drove into the park just about every day to check out the different areas.  It is a 25 mile curvy, windy trip to get into the main areas of the park, even though the campground is 5 miles from the entrance.  We hiked up to Vernal Falls, well us girls hiked up to the base, and the boys continued to the very top.  A very LONG - elevated hike.  But a beautiful view!!

Here we are at the entrance.  Have to get the traditional photo!
 To the right is Bridal Falls.  We saw pictures of this falls, in the spring, and it is huge.  Guess this is proof of the dryness in the area and the effects of mountain snow meltoff.  It still is an awesome sight.  NOTE:  return here in the spring!
As the boys hiked up the 100's of steps and steep climb to the top of Vernal Falls, this was the pool at the base of one of the water cliffs.  Gorgeous.  Glad we got to see it, without doing the strenuous hike.  Thanks Boys!!!
Our resident professional photographers at work.    Half Dome in the distance.  Solar dome and Crouch dome in the front.   We must have 1000's of photos and we haven't even been on the road a full year.  Someday it will be great to review all of these photos and show our grandkids what it all looked like in "the good old days".  At least their not in black & white, although I love B&W photos.  Another drive and hike we get to this panoramic lookout point.  Half Dome in the distance.

I love showing just how high we are and how small we our in comparison.  I do NOT like heights but the view just took all that fear away.  Just a wonderful place to see God's creation and how magnificient creation is.  A definite place to put on the Bucket List.

 They do have free buses to take you to many of the valley locations and fee based buses to take you throughout the park.  We stopped at many pulloffs so that would never work for us.

Another drive and hike we got to this cliff area (OK that was a little scary bein up so high with no rails or rocks to stop you).  This is The Valley.  Ranger station and shops somewhere down there.  We kept our eyes open for snakes, bears, and coyotes as warned.  Luckily, did not encounter any on our hikes but saw a coyote standing by side of road - looking like he was waiting to cross.  Drove right past him and he didn't budge or grab a bite of Randy's photo taking arm that was hanging out the window.

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Kempf's drove away into the sunset on Friday, enroute to Fresno to fly home very early Saturday morning. : >(((   Did I mention that our location has NO cell service, NO/poor internet?  Can you say panic and electronic withdrawals !! We got back into our routine.  Laundry, bills, Buddy haircut, and other stuff.  Sunday we drove into Groveland the closest town (20miles) for Church in the Park.  We attended last Sunday, great people and great message.  On the way back to the park we stopped at a pulloff to see why everyone was stopped.  The now 4th largest fire in California history was 24 hours old. 

Back at the campground this was the view of the sky from our campsite.  Pinkish, very gray sky.  Sun was clouded over as the fire's smoke 10 miles away was blowing our direction.  Later in the afternoon I went to let Buddy out and thought it was snowing.  Ash from the fire was raining down all over the campground.  We talked to the office and co-campers.  Too far away to worry....Monday we decided to head back into Yosemite to see the Visitors Center and a few areas in the Valley that we had missed.  We were gone 5 hours and when we returned this was the sky's appearance.  Campground was clearing out.  Power was out at the campground but they were not making us leave.  Poor Buddy was without air conditioning for 3 hours and he was hot.  Talk was that Hwy 120 west of campground was closed and we would have to drive through Yosemite to leave.  We decided to stay Monday night and see if the fire became contained so we could stay.  We had almost 2 more weeks of our reservation at Yosemite Lakes Campground. We spent the night after moving our RV away from the trees and only 3 other RVer's stayed.  Randy had a pow wow with the other guys and we would all watch out for each other if things changed.  The office said they would wake us if we had to leave.  By morning the water was being shut off and we were all told we had to evacuate.  So off we drove through Yosemite's beauty but winding, curvy roads out the South entrance to Mariposa where we found a fairgrounds campground.  We needed to regroup and figure out a plan for our unscheduled 2 weeks.

After having our Internet and Cell service returned, Thank You God!!  We saw just how bad the fire had gotten and that we would probably not be able to return to the Yosemite Lakes campground.  Unfortunately,  we had our mail forwarded to Groveland Post Office and had to find a way there from the west side.  Well this time we could take just the truck up the winding curvy Hwy and back onto the New Priest Road to Groveland.  Took us 1+ hours.

We got our mail and thought we would check out the small Groveland museum (free) and picnic in the park.  Walked into the museum and within a few moments they were told to close as they were evacuating Pine Mountain Lake subdivision just East of Groveland.  Those poor people.  It made us really think about how grateful we are to be able to "move" our home.  But what if we were back in Fort Atkinson and had to think about everything we once owned.  It took us months to get ride of everything in the 4 bedroom house.  Now move what you can in 1 day.    What would you take?

Pictures from East Groveland and how different the fire had gotten from Sunday to Wednesday.  As I write this the fire is only 40% contained and the firemen are still fighting to control it.  Please Pray for all of the Firemen and the supportive staff that are tirelessly fighting this fire.  The map is the extent of the fire as of today.  I put an arrow where Groveland is and where our campground WAS.  (Click any pic to enlarge)  BE SAFE!!