Every year I plan a camping trip to Yosemite Valley.  I get reservations in December for the last weekend in April or first weekend in May.  Over the years the group has grown and this year I had 3 campsites reserved.  As with every year, I was so excited for this weekend!  We've got it down to a routine -- arrive Friday night, hike Saturday, dutch-oven dinner and good times around the campfire and then we wrap up with "church on the rock" on Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, that isn't quite the way it went this year...

During the middle of last week we checked the forecast for the weekend.  It wasn't a pretty picture.  100% chaince of rain on Friday and then 70% chance of showers on Saturday and Sunday.  They sure did get the 100% chance of rain right.  We've got some good (and crazy) friends who still wanted to brave the rain.  They scored serious points with me this weekend.  :)  We headed up on Friday night in essentially a torrential downpour.  By the time we arrived at our campsites, they were a swamp land.  And our poor friend Steve who had arrived a couple hours earlier had been battling with putting up a 6 man SUMMER tent on his own.  Needless to say, it resembled the great lakes more than it did a tent by morning.  We arrived with an "E-Z Up", one of those big canopy things.  We used that to keep the tents relatively dry as we put them up.  By the time both tents were up though, we were soaked to the skin.  Absolutely drenched.  The rains never let up during the night.  The sound of the pouring rain and maintaining a level of consciousness that kept us away from the sides of the tent resulted to a pretty sleepless night. I think those that chose to sleep in their cars probably slept more soundly than we did.

The rain kept coming on Saturday morning.  We all circled Erika's tent (under the E-Z up) trying to keep us and our breakfast dry.   We then got resourceful and pulled out the tarp from under the great lakes tent and strung it from the trees to create another shelter.  Aside from the bark and dirt chunks that landed in a few breakfast items -- it worked pretty well.  We were discussing what we could do for the day -- if hiking would be an option when the park ranger stopped by our camp.  When we asked him what the forecast was for the day - he said "MS".  "More of the same."  Glacier Point ended up not opening up due to weather and the clouds were thick and fairly low.  We decided at that point to drive around the valley and check out the main attractions - view point of Lower Yosemite Falls, Bridel Veil Falls, the Tunnel View Point.  We had lunch under the shelter of a bus stop.  The rain stopped for a few hours and we did enjoy some mystical views.  With the fog and the mist coming down the mountains and the bulging waterfalls and roaring rivers -- it was still pretty gorgeous.  Just a wet gorgeous.

The group decided on Saturday afternoon that rather than subject ourselves to more rain we would take shelter at Lindy's Dad's house.  While packing up camp, a few of the boys decided to feed the squirrels, little did they know that those squirrels would END UP IN THE PICKUP!  We found two in there!  The first we found when one of the pickup doors was left open -- we shooed him out and then made sure we shut that door.  We had no idea that we trapped one in there!  It scared me to death when I found it.  Good thing we found it while we were still parked.  That could have been a disaster!

We spent a warm and dry night in Groveland at Lindy's Dad's.  We even still managed to use the dutch ovens in the kitchen oven and cook ourselves up a serious dinner. And Lee killed us all at Doms.

My favorite part of these weekends is always the church service we hold on the Church Rock.  I was sorry we didn't get to do that this year.  But, despite the rain - we still had a great time.  Lee and I have some awesome friends.  We're very grateful for them.

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