california vacation, part 2: rv trip to yosemite national park

yosemite national park = breathtaking beauty. i'm serious. i would see something and literally feel like the sheer magnificence of it would drive me insane. but i'm skipping a whole bunch. so let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start...aww! i love the sound of music. anyway)...

i decided we would go to yosemite a little late (as in march or so). yosemite campgrounds sell out within the first few minutes they become available, which is usually many months before. so for our june trip, all spots were released on the 15th of february. but they don't release all the campgrounds for the entire national park and leave some campgrounds that are on a first-come, first-served basis.

this was what i was banking on, because when it comes to camping out for anything, i consider myself an expert (well, i've mostly done it for u2 concerts. but still. i know how to get somewhere early.)

so a quick summary first:
-our camping group consisted of: me, ario, the kids, my mom, my uncle, roxana, her mama (laya), and ario's mom (farideh).
-plan: rent an rv and leave for yosemite monday early evening, return thursday mid-afternoon. so in essence, a 3-day trip
-food: basically, we bought out costco.

monday morning, ario and i, my mom, and roxana left to go pick up the rv. the one they had picked out to give us looked pretty torn up, with the upholstery ripped etc. we decided to be real iroonis and complain, because...why not? i think we were secretly hoping they would just give us a discount because what iranian doesn't love a good discount? our big bargaining chip about changing the rv was that because there was part of a seat that had a loose wood plank, then one of the kids' fingers could get stuck in there and they could seriously hurt themselves. whenever you bring up the possibility of injury to a child, people are willing to accommodate you because damn if we don't live in a lawsuit-happy country. they changed the rv and in the meantime, we drove up to san luis obispo so i could pick up my avisa backpack (you'll see pics below) and ario and roxana could stuff their faces with some damn good authentic burrito. (another sidenote: san luis obispo is awesome. it's one of the places ario and i have considered moving to...)

anyway, so when we came back with the rv, the first thing roxana and i did was start cleaning the shit out of it. we wiped down every possible surface you could wipe, bleached the floors, and covered all the upholstery with sheets so that we wouldn't contract scabies or bed bugs. well?? you never know!!

we then proceeded to stock all the cabinets with the tons of food that kept appearing by the steps of the rv, and because we were so crafty, we labeled what was on the inside of each cabinet so that nobody would have to scamper around like crazy looking for stuff. what we learned was that
#1: the elder tenants of the rv are either too impatient or too retarded to look on the very clearly-labeled (and neatly-written!) piece of paper that said what was on the inside of each cabinet and
#2: when they *did* find the item they were looking for, it didn't always end back up in the cabinet that it was supposed to be in. so basically, the only retards that were looking for things were me and roxana.

we left around 8 at night with the kids fed, showered, defecated and what not. the rv had a bedroom in the back so artin, niek and avisa fell asleep back there while we were driving. we didn't particularly pay attention to the giant 'all passengers must be seated and buckled' sign but i think we did see the point of the rule because walking around a moving rv is much like moving around an airplane during severe turbulence--you're probably not going to die, but you'll most likely fall over on someone or hit your head. at some point i found a sleeping avisa about halfway off the bed, just bouncing around with each bump. i guess her weight wasn't enough to keep her in one place!

now let me tell you what my plan was: leave at night so we could get to yosemite at the butt crack of dawn or earlier--say, 3 am--so that we could get the coveted campsite. part of my plan worked, the other not so much.

the part that worked was we actually DID get to yosemite at 3 am. except the campsite we were supposed to go to wasn't open until july. and we didn't know where we were supposed to go. that, by the way, was the part that didn't work so well. we even stopped at some map to figure out where we could go, but it turned out ALL the campgrounds that i was thinking of were not open. but we didn't know that until well into the morning. boooo! here's the map. we were originally planning on going to bridalveil creek.


so while everyone was sleeping, ario and i drove back and forth from one of the park entrances off of wawona road. each trip was about 20 miles of steep incline (and a return steep decline) which is not exactly quick or easy with an rv. we ended up parking around 4 am in some random parking lot off of glacier point drive. we woke up around 6 am to this:

(half dome)

if this doesn't re-energize you after a long night, i don't know what will. maybe cocaine? but this is way better for you.

we decided to drive back down to one of the entrances and just wait for the park ranger to come and tell us where the hell we were supposed to go. now this is the part that pisses me off. because as it turns out, there were only four campgrounds that were open at all in all of yosemite, and all of them happened to be in yosemite valley. yosemite valley ALSO happens to be the most popular destination among all the visitors, so all the park ranger had to do, and the tender hour of 8 am, was to tell us to go there. but instead she suggested we go camp OUTSIDE the park (another 45 minutes of not-so-easy driving) and come back the next day. again, she said nothing about where to go. just to come back. but luckily we ended up figuring out that we had to be at a camp office in yosemite valley.

so we started to head that way, but made multiple stops along the way because the sheer beauty at the end of every turn was like a magnet that pulled the rv off the road and forced us to get out and just watch. super cheesy but true: i was reminded of jodie foster in contact, when she finally went into space and said "they should've sent a poet"...because i'm not sure words will ever capture how awe-inspiring yosemite is. meadows of tall grass, mountain after mountain of granite rock, waterfalls, trees lined up along every edge of the road...the very definition of beauty.


finally we made our way to the campground reservation office in yosemite valley around noon or so. i walked into the office and asked how we had to go about getting a campsite. the story (which is not very clear on their website, so this is good for anyone who wants to go!) is this. they have a certain number of spots that are available every day because people don't show up or they leave early etc. they give these spots away at 3 pm every day, and they call out your name in the order that you came to the office. they take down 50 names. we were #48. i asked what the chance of getting a campsite that day was, and he probably didn't want me crying so he told me "once we got down to #47"...which may have been in january during a blizzard for all i know.

so glad we had the rv. we parked in the parking lot and went for a hike along a short trail so that we could be back in time at 3 pm (i was, unfortunately, incredibly optimistic about them reaching #48 on the waitlist). it was gorgeous. some of these pictures may be from roxy's camera. basically any of the ones that look amazing are actually roxana's because she is an amazing photographer, and she doesn't even try :)


all was fun and games until a few hikers were looking at a snake far, far away from the actual trail. roxana, who moments before had been one with nature, all but doing yoga on the rocks, decided it was time to bolt back to the rv. she declared then that she was staying on paved roads indefinitely.

3 pm. 50 people loitering in front of the camp office. the park ranger comes out and everyone stares, one eye all expectant and hopeful on her, the other eye on the clipboard she carries with all of our names. very dramatic. when i saw everyone there, i was annoyed that they had all come back. don't they have anything better to do than stand around a camp office? they're in yosemite for god's sake.

she read off names, got to #13 and that was that. but she did give everyone a number of a few campsites outside of the park and said they too were filling up. there was one campsite that had space for our rv and we basically booked it down a mountain and out of the park to the most ghetto-ass rv park i've ever seen. the only perk of it was that the hotel next to it had a pool that we could use. oh, and also that we could dump all the dirty water and waste from the rv and fill back up on water and what not. needless to say, i was annoyed at it all. disappointed, defeated...i mean, if we had known where to go, we would've gotten a campsite for sure. we had been INSIDE yosemite at 3 am!

not letting the man get me down, i told ario that we would leave the rv park at 3:30 am and be back in front of the campsite office in yosemite valley by 4:20. (by the way, in case you're wondering why we didn't just park somewhere else in yosemite...well, you're not allowed to just park anywhere that's not a designated campsite overnight. ranger usually go by around midnight and check everywhere. and you don't want to get into it with the yosemite police! they've got bears on their side.) my plan was met with resounding disagreement, most emphatically from my mom who basically said (in farsi) "what kind of crazy ass shit are you talking about?" and "stop talking crazy" and "you're crazy"...basically all kinds of variations of defects in my mental status. but lucky for me, ario had the keys and the only one who was driving. ario was on board completely, so that was an easy win.

at the rv park:



3:30 in the morning, my phone alarm went off and ario went and turned on the car. over the roar of the engine, i heard my mom's murmur of "you are crazy" but that was easily drowned out as i pictured myself first in the glorious line at the office, and then at a perfect campsite surrounded by trees (and not three other RVs...)

as i mentioned before, the rv is not exactly a smooth ride, so by the time we got there, everyone was awake, though they were still in bed. 4:15 and we were back in the parking lot at yosemite valley and i believe it was my uncle who set "oh my god! look at the line!!" and i jumped up in alarm (and hit my head hard) when everyone snickered and said "there is nobody here. you're the only crazy."

well, my crazy self and I took a blanket, walked up to the office door and sat my ass down right in front. it was beautiful and peaceful. i stared at the mountains, the silhouette of the trees, and watched bats fly around, which incidentally did not bother me at all. bats only bother me when they are in my home. anyway. it was beautifully serene and quiet.

about 15 minutes into my zen session, another person shows up. and 20 minutes after that, two other people show up. my mom came to see how i was doing and was shocked that i was not the only crazy! she brought us coffee, which was really sweet and i thanked her, but what i really wanted to do was say IN YO' FACE MAMA! :)

by about 7, there were probably a good 15 people lined up. and you know where i was in line? first. it was a good feeling, i'll be honest, because i knew we had a campsite. and i knew that if they had even one open in the morning, we would get it and not have to come back at 3 and go through all that hoopla. you know why? because i was...FIRST!! oh yeah baby.

at 8, the rangers came, opened the office and wouldn't you know it, they had three campsites open for immediate occupancy. so basically the two crazies that came superearly? yeah, those two, one of whom was MOI. those two crazies personified "the early bird catches the worm."

i walked, no actually i think i pranced, back to the rv and gloated that not only did we have a campsite, but we had a campsite NOW. so it was worth getting everyone pissed at me, because we were all happy. yay!

so after we went to the campsite, we decided to go to yosemite falls. i'll let the pictures do the talking.




the rest of the day was spent just chillin'. and looking at horse penises. oh, i may have left out that minor fact. there was a huge horse stall next to the campground (not our campsite per se, but the all the campgrounds were pretty close to the horse place) and it smelled like horse poo when we got there. amazingly enough, i couldn't smell it after 5 minutes. this would be a good thing, if it wasn't so gross. but alas, the schlongs made up for it.


damn roxy, get a hold of yourself!

and here's a little video from the stalls:



night time came and we had a fire and all the other camping stuff that go with it; that is, if "all the other camping stuff" means a shit ton of beer and wine, and a visit from the local bears.

now, yosemite has lots of bears, but they are not at all aggressive and for the most part, leave everyone alone. that is, unless you have food out. which is why yosemite has metal food lockers with a twistable hinge-type knob so that you can put your food in there and the bears won't be able to get it. the mechanism is quite simple really: just close the door then twist the hinge in place. there's even a diagram on the locker.

about 6 years ago, we went camping in yosemite and because iranians as a whole think they are above all the rules, we didn't lock our food locker. we put the food in there, shut the door, but didn't actually twist the knob. the mentality was "no bear is going to come and open the locker for food." now mind you, they had shown us a video when we first arrived of a bear breaking into a car to take a baguette out (it was probably a french bear). so that night, a bear did come, and ate all of our food, and took off with our bag of rice. arash almost got eaten by it because he went to get the video camera and record it, and then thinking he was walking away from the bear, he ended up running smack INTO the bear. my sister and i thought making loud noises would scare it off, but the only noise we seemed to be able to make was "MOOOO!" which was counterproductive, because the last thing we really needed was for the bear to think there was a cow in the tent. oh and the tents? not really tents. the place we stayed then was like small room with three concrete walls and then a canvas rooftop and a canvas curtain. so there was no real DOOR, so really the bear could have, technically, walked right in. my point being, we had already experienced a close encounter with a bear, so i was not about to have another one.

so before going to bed, i started to put the food away. since the "grown-ups" were still sitting out by the fire, i assumed they would put the rest of the stuff away and lock the locker. and i'm guessing they thought i had already locked the locker...you know what happened? i like to call it too many chefs in the kitchen, ario likes to call it sheer stupidity, but...the food locker was left open. and a bear came. actually three of them came. around 1 in the morning, we woke up to the gigantic grunts and growls, then we realized some of the noises came from people snoring up front in the rv. yes, some members of the family have a tendency to snore. and by snore, i mean sound like a bear growling (snorowling?)...but aside from the snowrawling, there was definite sounds of banging, grumphing, and general raiding of the food locker. i spent three hours watching bears walk around our rv. i few times, we had to turn the rv on because they were trying to get in the back compartments (where the luggage goes, not in the actual rv) so everytime the rv started shaking, ario would run up and turn on the engine. the bears would run about 5 feet, turn around, and realize nothing was going on and waltz right on back.

in the morning, we had a nice little mess to clean up. apart from the 10 pounds of peanut shells and the destroyed honey container...


...we also this delightful little present from the three little bears:


lovely, isn't it?

our plans for the last day in yosemite ended up falling through. we wanted to go rafting down the river, but none of the kids weighed enough. the minimum was 50 pounds, and artin didn't even come close. then we thought we could go bikeriding, but the kids were tired and so were the rest of us. i don't think anybody got much sleep--special thanks to me. at one point, roxana said she never thought she could get less sleep than she did during her finals week. but then again, she's never gone camping with me before. poor thing (sorrryyy roxy!!) so we decided to head back, but made plenty of pit stops on the drive out of the park for more views and pictures.



i drove most of the way back, with roxana as my ever-so-entertaining copilot. despite the fact that she was getting pretty sick, i gotta say--she kept me laughing. :)

i can tell you that i will never go camping without an rv ever again. it was so convenient and easy with the kids. if they had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the toilet was right there. because you can be damn sure i wouldn't walk outside with a bear just eating all of our marshmallows three feet away! the only downside to the rv was that SOME members of the party needed their ciggie fix. it only happened twice, but once is all it takes to give me a migraine from the smoke. but luckily, it was nothing that a little lime couldn't take care of.

here are some more pictures from the trip:

so. camping--definitely going again next summer! and this time, i know what to do :)