Yosemite: Day One.

We left at o'dark thirty. Aka 6:22am.

We felt pretty fancy that we were off to Yosemite while everyone else around us was on their way to work. Some may call it smug. Smug...fancy...either way, we were NOT on our way to work. We were on our way to FUN!

The windmills were spinning away. They're quite a sight to see. I don't know how many of them their are...hundreds? One hundred? I don't know. A lot. And they're big. Huge.

We drove for hours...back roads, highways, through towns, over bridges, through tunnels. Through the valley...into the foothills...and right on up into the mountains. Beautiful landscape, each in it's own way. (Makes you want to break out in "Over the river and through the woods..." doesn't it?)

Finally, after almost 4 hours of driving (and two potty breaks) we came to......THIS! Yosemite Valley, 24 mi. YES! We were almost there!

I didn't take any pictures as we entered. I think I was too busy trying to pick my jaw up off the floor board. I couldn't take my eyes off of the scenery...huge redwoods, delicate ferns, sunshiny meadows, and of course, giant mountains made of granite. Solid granite. Sheer mountain sides. With people on them. (We'll talk more about the mountain climbers later...it still makes me feel a little woozy just thinking about it.)

We eventually arrived at our destination...Curry Village. Or Camp Curry as this very cool sign says. I wish I'd taken a picture of it at night. The letters light up and it is so cute. So home-y. So...camp-y. Vintage camp-y.

We actually arrived a little earlier than we thought we would so our room wasn't quite ready. So we decided to take a drive down to Yosemite Village to see what we could see. There was a large grocery store/gift shop. There was a cafe that served tasty fries and chicken strips and burgers. And there was a mountaineering shop. We got a bite to eat then wandered around the shops a while.

It was nice...but the boys were itching for some nature. And NOW.

We headed back to the front desk and got our cabin keys.

This was Home Sweet Home for two days and two night. 3B. Our cozy little cabin. A bathroom. A double bed for Chris and I. A twin bed for the boys to fight over. And a roll-away. It was supposed to be two doubles but something happened along the way and this is the cabin we ended up with. But we weren't complaining...we were just happy to be there. And it turned out that the bed situation was very cozy. Not to mention, we were so tired we could have slept on slabs of granite and been just fine.

We unpacked and settled into our room a bit then decided to take the free shuttle around the valley. We ended up at Yosemite Falls Trail, an easy stroll to the foot of the falls. The only thing about going to Yosemite this time of year is the lack of water. Yosemite has amazing waterfalls....Bridal Veil, Vernal Falls, Yosemite Falls, just to name a few. But, at this time of year they're pretty much dry. Which was OK. Beauty is beauty, wet or dry. We'll just have to be sure and go sometime again when the falls are flowing so the boys can witness them. I'm thinking in the spring...? Maybe?

We wandered up to the foot of the falls and let the boys climb around a bit. It was the first time I cried. Anxiety is a big pain in the butt. And I have it. I knew being in Yosemite with my kids was not going to be easy. And I had done what I could to prepare myself. But I wasn't ready for them to just jump right in and start climbing shards of granite (okay, okay fine...so maybe they're not shards, necessarily...but when you're in the middle of an anxiety attack, they really SEEM like it!)...one kid bounding east and the other bounding west. It was almost too much for this over-protective mother to bear. But, I powered through, hid my tears from the boys (Chris saw me and was very patient with me even going so far as to wrangle the boys back in a bit, at least in the same vicinity of each other), and tried my best to just let them be kids. On the way down Ian climbed every boulder he could find and Seth tried his hand at balancing on fallen trees. BIG fallen trees. With long drops to the ground. I bit my lip, wiped my eyes, and focused on what great balance he has and encouraged him along, even though inside I was terrified. It's funny how different my boys are...in all aspects. And now, they're even different in their climbing preferences. Seth likes to balance on logs and climb the sure paths. Ian, on the other hand, likes to climb big boulders, but not on the path side. Not on the side with natural steps. He wants to find the hardest way to climb it and take that route. He wants to scale it...mountain climber style. But...I must say, he's pretty good at it!

By this time it's getting a bit dark so we decide it's time to head back. We were all pretty tired...we'd had a long day of travel. So we headed back to the shuttle stop and waited for our ride back to our cabin.

We all finally petered out around 8pm. Actually, I think I was in my jammies and in my side of the bed by 7:30, if not earlier, reading my book. How I kept my eyes open I'll never know. We were all pretty tired. After all, we'd been up since 5am. Eventually, everyone was tucked in and snoring by 8:30pm. Snug as bugs in our cozy little cabin in the big, beautiful woods of Yosemite Valley. We needed to rest up after all, tomorrow was going to be a big day.