Trip to Yosemite offers the bear necessities for family fun
My sons discovered a new kind of theme park this week, one that
despite never really adding new attractions still brings people
back year after year.
It’s called Yosemite National Park
– note how there is no corporate sponsor before the name; crazy
concept.
Trip to Yosemite offers the bear necessities for family fun
My sons discovered a new kind of theme park this week, one that despite never really adding new attractions still brings people back year after year.
It’s called Yosemite National Park – note how there is no corporate sponsor before the name; crazy concept.
The park is about two hours closer to Hollister than Disneyland and only costs $20 per car to enter – that’s $5 per person in my family. There is no mall outside of its gates and no fireworks show at night. And darn it if my teens still didn’t have fun.
My wife and I were anxious for our boys’ first reaction to seeing Yosemite Valley, which becomes visible as you turn one of the many road bends leading to the park. Our first glimpse of the massive granite slabs of El Capitan on the right and Half Dome in the distance drew an astonished, “Wow, that doesn’t look real,” from our oldest son and knowing smiles from his parents.
When we jumped out of the car at Inspiration Point, just past the end of a long tunnel (in which I had to honk, at the boys’ request), we stopped to capture the iconic photos of the valley – huge granite rock faces framing a dense forest canopy that from our vantage point conceals the tens of thousands of visitors who scurry around its floor.
In my car, we’re always on the lookout for wild animals. It’s one of those car games designed to keep the kids occupied during a long journey. As we wound our way through the mountains and down into the valley, we only saw birds and squirrels – nice, but nothing too exciting.
Once in the valley, that all changed.
We signed up for the two-hour, open air tram tour of the valley floor, led by a good-natured, if corny, ranger. Curving around the valley floor, our driver stopped at a turnout to show us two climbers scaling the face of El Capitan. Because of the sheer size of the rock face, it took nearly five minutes for everyone to see the ant-sized duo as they made their way up the 3,000-foot rock face.
Continuing our journey, we stopped along a creek and the boys spotted “the biggest crawfish” they had ever seen as well as a trout lurking in the bubbling, crystal clear mountain water. No Disney Fast Pass or 3-D glasses were needed for this show.
Wrens floated above our tram from branch to branch and squirrels scurried across the road.
As we passed through a busy campground, our ranger/guide told us that “park policy has changed so we try to keep bears and humans as far apart as possible.” Literally the moment that sentence finished, and as if on cue, the ranger and the rest of us were caught by surprise by a bear meandering through the woods toward the campers.
She started telling little kids on bikes to get out of the area and told looky-lou motorists to “keep moving” as she phoned in the bear sighting to her superiors. Her sense of urgency and concern made it that much more exciting as we all scrambled for our cameras to capture the scene.
My wife and I had been to Yosemite together three or four times and we had never seen a bear. By the time our car reached the tunnel to leave the valley, we had spotted two bears and three mule deer. We even spotted a third bear as we passed the Wawona Hotel.
Add that to the breathtaking views, the perfect weather and a pair of teenagers who were in awe of nature and didn’t once miss their cell phones or reach for an iPod, our little impromptu vacation couldn’t have been choreographed better had we hired a travel agent to set it up for us.
I’m sure we’ll head to Disneyland again for the thrill rides and the shows. But now our boys know what it’s like to experience and appreciate a real park without scheduled shows and animatronic bears. They can’t wait to go back.
Adam Breen writes a blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com and teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School. He is a reporter for The Pinnacle and former editor of The Free Lance.
