Chubby Diary: Yosemite- Day 2

Sharing a room with our children proved to be difficult. I know my children are early risers...they have always been that way. But as they have grown older, I have been able to make "early riser" policies in our home...such as, I don't care what time you wake up, you just may NOT come out of your room (except to use the restroom, and in that case, you do NOT announce it to the whole house, you just go QUICKLY and QUIETLY to the bathroom) until 6am. But when you are sharing a room with said-early-risers you become aware of what time their mental alarm clock goes off in their head. Sometimes that was 4:45am...but most of the time it was just after 5am. :0(

We did still make them lay in their bed until 6am, and then because Rick and I still wanted to (attempt) to catch some Zzzz's, we turned on the TV at 6am, but they still had to stay in their beds for another hour. These policies (lying quietly/still in their beds until 7am) didn't always hold true for the vacationing-excitable-little-ones...oh well...I tried. :0/

Day 2 of vacation was going to be our first day of actual adventures in Yosemite Park.

We let daddy sleep a little bit longer, so the early risers and I went down to one of the hotel restaurants for a fuel-packed-breakfast...

And then it was go-time!

Once we drove into the Yosemite Park, we still had a little over an hour drive until we got to our destination of the day...Yosemite Valley. It was a thrilling drive though...GORGEOUS forestry, stillness of life, and then we drove through a tunnel in a mountain...so exciting! Once we reached Yosemite Valley, we got out of our van, and immediately we were greeted by wild life in the little parking lot!!!

As neat as those deer were, our sensories were in over-drive and our eyes were quickly drawn away from the deer, and focused in on the INCREDIBLE massive mountains directly in front of us!

We were pulled toward them...we.must.go.explore.

Oh the things we saw...

The (dry) Lower Yosemite Falls...

More wildlife...

The old church (still in operation)...

We had a GREAT day together...

One other thing we explored in Yosemite Valley, was the Yosemite National Park Museum...

Just outside of the museum was an old Indian village complete with (original?) tee-pees, and an Indian Cheif's house/hut...

I was shocked to hear my kids report at the end of our trip, that the other (in addition to Bravo Farms) favorite thing they did on our vacation was to sit in these Indian tee-pees...WHAT!?!? I guess they are entitled to their own "favorite thing(s)"...but REALLY!? After EVERYTHING else we saw!?!? Sigh.

I had such an AWESOME day exploring Yosemite Valley!!!...