Day 25 - Arrived at Yosemite. Happy 4th of July!!

Monday, July 4, 2016
Posted from: Buck Meadows, CA Yosemite Ridge Resort

Miles driven: 282

Total trip miles: 4,599

Sequoia NP has a cave. If you want to see this cave, you must purchase tickets. $15 for adults and $8 for kids. You must also purchase these tickets in advance. I was told a day or two...unless it is a holiday weekend. Then you can just forget it. So we squeezed ourselves into the 11:30 tour on Monday. Most people were packing up and leaving. We were supposed to be heading to Yosemite today, so this delayed our travel day quite a bit. 

It takes two hours to get to the cave parking lot from our campground. We cannot pull the camper very far into this park entrance, so we needed to coordinate somewhere for it to park. I talked to the campground people and they said they could allow a late checkout of 3:00, but no later or they charge for another night. The tour is 90 minutes plus our two hour drive...we would be pushing it. 

We were looking at four hours of driving to see the cave, plus another 3-4 hours of driving to get to Yosemite. 

It is here that I would like to add that I gave Matt every out possible to skip this whole cave thing. 1) We have caves in the Midwest...really cool ones. 2) We have a chance to see more caves on this trip. 3) It's 4+ extra hours of driving!!!

But Matt loves caves. This was going to happen. No doubt about it.

So here we are checking in at the entrance to Sequoia. We got behind an RV that believed the gate folks were his own personal tour guides. Oh and he could only drive his RV about 10 miles into the park from this entrance due to the hairpin turns (our truck was max length). He seemed shocked at this. All I can say is: Research people!!! Be a planner. All the cool kids are doing it! (And naturally people were honking behind us...as if that will help.)

On the bright side (aka: my side of the truck), we had this beautiful tree to look at.

We stopped at the visitor center on the way in so the kids could be sworn in as Junior Rangers. This ranger, like so many others, was great even though they do this one hundred times a day. (Though the guy next to her that Grace had to interview as one of her requirements acted like this was the silliest part of his job. That was the first time we had seen that.) 

We had time, so we stopped at this tunnel rock. The kids had their hands up in case it shifted while they were under it.

Public Service Announcement: Don't let strange men carry your phone for you. This is bound to happen. Access to the camera is not password protected, people!!! 

We finally arrived at the cave parking lot after driving on a rather rough road. We were early, so we ate our lunch and enjoyed the nice day. 

When it was our turn, we listened to the safety talk (rattlesnakes, bears, falling rocks, and poison oak...the usual) and off we went down the hill. The path to get to the cave is steep and goes down a very long way. Just don't think about the going up part. 

More waterfalls! At the bottom of the hill was a very peaceful waterfall area.

This cave had the best cave entrance gate ever. It was a giant spider web. 

And yes, the people in front of us are wearing winter hats, coats and mittens. The cave is a constant 50 degrees. Those of us from Iowa just threw on a hoodie.

Bacon! That's what they call this formation.

Pictures in the cave did not turn out good at all. This was the big cavern at the end of the tour. They actually have you enter in relative darkness, then completely shut off all lights for a minute so you can experience total darkness. 

I thought this was the best part. It is hard to see, but this is a waterway. The grey colored rock in the middle had water running through it like a water slide. 

Here is another picture of the gate. You can see that the middle part revolves. When it is closed the web is complete. 

When the tour was over, we hiked up the steep hill in record time. We knew 3:00 was approaching fast.

Moro Rock. This is the rock we climbed a couple days ago. 

Look closely and you can see the hairpin curves on this road. They went on forever. 10mph was the average speed on these roads, so it wasn't like you could go faster to beat the clock. We had passed a bad accident on the way into the park this morning.

Again it looks like I am taking a picture of a nice yellow car, but I was actually taking a picture of the bridge.

We finally got back to the campground five minutes after 3:00 and the lady was running my card to charge me for the full day. Oh no! I told her about the cave tour and that we were now leaving. She smiled and said that if I gave her an honest review of the cave, she would refund me the extra night she had just charged me. Ha! She had apparently lived in the area for years, but has never seen the cave. So I told her what we thought of it as she refunded my money. Nice lady. 

We were finally on the road to Yosemite.

Uhh...Who left Bob alone with the sign machine again?! I couldn't even get them all in the frame. 

When you come to the end of the Earth you should turn right at 40 mph. Trust us.

We arrived at our Yosemite campground!! The campground was very small but had everything you could ever need including a gas station that sold diesel, a pool, a restaurant, a general store and more. And our campsite was the best one in the place!!! We had a huge front yard with a white fence. Matt and I felt like we had finally achieved the American Dream. Two and a half kids (Caleb is small for his age), and a white fence around the yard. The temperatures were for forcasted to be moderate in the 80s with lows in the 40s/50s all week. Perfect. We are here until Saturday. I will probably cry when it is time to leave.