Being the cheapskate I am, I scan LivingSocial and Groupon every week or so for deals I can use, and in March I found a SA-WEET deal on a hotel room near Yosemite National Park (not to brag, but we got two nights for around $150 and saw a sign on the door that said the normal rate was $400/night. So, yeah. Actually. Bragging here). While we’re out here in California, we want to make sure we take advantage of…being out here in California. Doing stuff we couldn’t do if we lived somewhere else. Like driving to Yosemite for a long weekend.
So off we went on one such long weekend, which happened to be Easter! Here’s a quick recap for posterity.
Friday
After about 3 and half hours driving through some interesting scenery (miles and miles of orchards and industrial wine processing), we climbed up the mountains and into the park. The drive up was pretty awe-inspiring; it was a great introduction to the grandness that we were about to be a part of for a short time.
Grand vistas bring out the explorer in me.
We even had our fuzziest wildlife encounter on the drive up. Unfortunately we didn’t see any bears, although there were lots of warnings errvrywhere about them.
Coyote!
Once we checked into our hotel (and found an awesome river view right out the back porch. Seriously it was right there. Super loud once you opened that door), we just had time to make a quick hike to Bridalveil Fall on the way dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel.
Our little map told us that Bridalveil Fall is a great tall ol’ waterfall, made famous by its misty misty mist that mists out around its misty falls. Also, it was noted that you may get quite misted on the hike over, so we prepared ourselves for a good ol’ fashioned misting.
This picture does not adequately show how soaking wet I was.
This picture better shows how very very moist it was.
We dried off in the car on the way to The Ahwahnee, a hotel built right in the middle of the Yosemite Valley in the 1920s. It is lovely and awesome. Like, imagine a gigantic hunting lodge built by robber barons in the roaring ’20s. Are you imagining it? Oh my gosh, you totally nailed it! We didn’t want to blow our budget in the fancy-shmancy dining room (they had a dress code, anyway), so we headed over to the bar for drinks and a light dinner. It was a great atmosphere, with a pianist who was playing exactly what I would play if I were a lounge pianist. Seriously, I was calling that shit left and right. I always wanted to be a pianist in a hazy bar, or in a Nordstroms. Because you really only need like an hour, two tops of solid music and then you can just repeat. And everyone will think you’re a God of piano because they’ll either be drunk or bored as shit waiting for their partner to finish shopping I MEAN HOW MANY WINGTIP BROGUES DO YOU NEED, ALBERTO? Anyway this place was friendly, if still pricey, and we liked it so much (Richard especially, just look at that face) we had dinner here Saturday night too.
We vowed to stay here one day. In the winter. It’d be so damn cozy. Once we can afford the luxury of bringing high heels to a hiking trip just so you can get into the dining room. OH and the $500+/night room rates.
At any rate *PUN EFFING INTENDED* we called it an early night in preparation for a full day of hiking on Saturday. Which shall be in a new post, because this one is already too long. But stay tuned, because it includes: Hiking! More waterfalls! Bears! More hiking! A thunderstorm! Someone falling to their doom! Snacks! And an attack by a wild animal! Read part 2.
*Most photos by Richard, who is awesome.
I LOVE THIS. I was cracking up in the airport reading it.