Yosemite National Park: A Wilderness Close to Heaven

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

It’s not easy to get the true figures for National Park attendance. It’s as if the Parks Service doesn’t want to suggest the different parks compete with each other for visitors. Figures were dropping until the poor economy spurred more visits. Ken Burns’ television series surely worked wonders encouraging Americans to go and see their parks.

The most popular national parks would appear to be Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Georgia with about 9 million annual visitors, Grand Canyon with five million, then Yosemite with 3.6 million and Yellowstone with 3.5 million.

We’ve always pushed European friends to visit our National Parks – told them they certainly have their own beaches and cobble stone streets but not, say, the Grand Canyon. Or Yellowstone or Yosemite. They particularly enjoy those three and surprisingly, if they have enough time, they drive to Mount Rushmore, too.

Yosemite is one of our favorites. It’s fairly accessible especially for those who live in the American Southwest as we do. The park is huge. With 1,169 square miles it is almost as big as our smallest state, Rhode Island (which has 1,545 sq miles) but its size make it 15 times larger than Washington, DC with its 68.25 sq miles.

Yosemite had 3.4 million visitors in 2006 and 3.6 million in 2008. Although 46 thousand visitors made wilderness use of the park in 2008, what disappoints park rangers is how in Yosemite 95 percent of the visitors see only 5 percent of the park. In other words, they drive from whatever entrance they use, straight down to the valley to see and photograph the classic attractions, hang around then leave.

For many, perhaps most of us, that is enough.

What to see

The Granite Cliffs 

El Capitan and Half Dome rear above the valley floor as Yosemite’s magnificent signature, its monuments. The panorama looking east from Tunnel View is literally breathtaking. El Capitan rises to its 7569 feet in all its austere splendor on the north side of the Merced river and, on the west side, Bridalveil Creek pours over Cathedral Rocks to add its cascade to the Merced.

“Wow! Nature in 3D,” says a small boy in the group standing near us. One older man, perhaps the grandfather, says to another beside him, “More like Cinerama. D’you remember that?”

More impressive is the remark by John Muir that the Park likes to use: [Yosemite] “is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.”

How one envies those innocents, those individuals who, long ago, were able to stumble upon such scenes privately before they had gained today’s fame!

Yosemite is said to be the top place in the world for rock climbing. Half Dome is better seen from the valley floor. Take time to go to the Valley Visitor Center and read how the land was formed and enjoy the legends especially of Half Dome. Here is the best view also of Yosemite Falls and if you’re here as the snow melts or after a storm enjoy the volume and fury of those waterfalls because the creek is dry in summer. The Falls are the tallest waterfalls in North America and the fifth highest in the world. They drop from a height of 2,426 feet above the 4,000 foot-high valley floor.

Living Nature 

What you may catch a glimpse of depends on the elevation and the season. Even perceptive, patient observers will see only a tiny percent of the 250 bird and 90 mammal species the park has recorded. In the lower elevations up to 3,000 to 4,000 feet, Grey Pine and Scrub Oaks, for example, grow happily and you might see Acorn Woodpeckers -- and Red-Tailed Hawks cruising overhead looking for a little Western Harvest Mouse. You may see Mule Deer – and if the deer are coming into rut you may be lucky enough to find two young males practicing their right to be dominant males.

Soon it will not be practice.

Higher up to, say, 6,000 to 7,000 feet, the trees will be Sugar Pine and the impressive Incense Cedar. Birds will include the Purple Finch and the Great Horned Owl. This is the terrain of the Western Grey Squirrel and the ubiquitous Black Bear (which is everywhere as it loses its fear of man). Higher up to 8,000 to 9,000 feet, too high for most visitors, Red Firs and Lodgepole Pines blanket the land; this is the territory of the Blue Grouse and the Common Raven, Coyotes and the Lodgepole Chipmunk.

Although the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is bigger it comprises multiple organisms. The Giant Sequoia, a member of the redwood family, is the largest single living thing on earth. It takes several hundred years to reach its maximum height of 300 feet. It can then measure up to 35 feet in diameter. Sequoias exist in Yosemite in three groves. The largest is the Mariposa Grove that for 88 years achieved world fame because the tunnel cut through the base of one of the trees in 1881 was wide enough for stagecoaches then automobiles to drive through. High winds and heavy rain toppled it in 1969 but it can still be seen where it fell. A fallen tree becomes, of course, a useful eco-system for life in the forest. Nature wastes nothing.

Car drivers can help protect the children of Mother Nature. The sign says it all, “Speeding cars hit dozens of black bears, hundreds of deer, and countless other animals on park roads every year.” The remedy is obvious. Slow down! Those are our parks and, in a way, our animals.

Where to Stay 

The choices are not as limited as you might think. If you approach the South entrance you come up on the impressive Tenaya Lodge, probably as upscale as anything you could expect to find in or close to any national park. The lodge is as close to the park as you could get without being in it and, of course, being an independent provider it can carry out whatever improvements it chooses without having to drag its plans through the stifling ranks of government bureaucracy.

Tenaya Lodge started 21 years ago as a Marriott and was taken over in 2001 by Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts. They made changes. Says Tom McCann, the general manager, “There were nine suites all with 42 inch TVs and all called ‘the Honeymoon Suites’ We dropped the name because it was odd sometimes to be renting one of those to a single guy!”

The lodge has 244 rooms and 50 more in the outlying cottages that are scattered in groves of incense cedars and sugar pines. The lodge is open all year. “We are at the same elevation as Palm Springs,” says McCann, “with “mild winters, early spring and long summers. Spring and fall here are like Palm Springs in winter.” Although the lodge is, at the moment, twice as busy in summer as in winter that may be changing. “Snow is white gold here,” says McCann, “but if the temperature rises five degrees we get rain not snow.” Nearby Badger Pass was the first ski destination in California.

When we asked the GM what his lodge offered the public, he replied, “We have 38 miles of mountain bike trails and a covered ice skating rink. An ice rink! And it’s true that if you build it, they will come.”

Then McCann gave us the long answer: “In no special order, we offer upscale dining, wine tastings, culinary workshops, train trips, cowboy jamborees, rock climbing, white water rafting, hiking, fly fishing, horseback riding, golf, watersports and spa treatments, photography classes, family re-unions, gold panning, Easter Egg hunts, winemakers weekends, art festivals, butterfly and story telling events.” Then he tells us about winter, “The lodge offers kids’ dinners with Santa packages, guided snow shoe tours, cross-country skiing, horse-drawn sleigh rides, star gazing, and romance and pet-friendly packages.” McCann pauses for breath then adds, “We even have civil War re-enactments and have a ‘Sleep-In Sunday’ with a late 2PM checkout.”

We don’t know about all that but we do know we had a marvelous dinner with, amongst the appetizers, a “potato bar” where martini glasses could be filled with three choices of mashed potato: one popular in Japan with horseradish sauce mixed in, another with added garlic and a third with blue cheese as part of the mix. About eight or so toppings were lined up, too, for the final step. And for desert the executive chef, Frederick Clabaugh himself, came in to prepare the flaming extravaganza.

Inside the park you’ll find the Wawona Hotel, a National Historic Landmark. A former miner, Galen Clark, put up the original building in 1876 as a stage coach stop but it was partly burned in a kitchen fire. The new main part was built in 1879 – they didn’t waste time in those days or maybe they didn’t have trade unions! The architecture has many of the rooms opening on to verandas: New England style. Today with 104 rooms it is a popular hotel for those who want to stay within the park -- in a building with character, near an inspiring grove of giant sequoias. The native Miwok Indians called this spot “Pallachun” which meant a good place to stop. Later the hotel’s name was changed to the Indian word Wah-wo-nah which meant big tree.

Clark was a popular figure. He has been called “the Guardian of Yosemite” and sometimes the “Johnny Appleseed of the Valley” because he planted 100 apple trees on his land, of which a dozen have survived. When his finances required him to take in a partner, Clark, who came from New Hampshire, chose Albert Henry Washburn, a Vermonter, to run the inn. Washburn appears to have been a compassionate employer. When the inn changed hands again two cooks who had specialized in apple pies for the guests for 37 years and 43 years found they had lost their jobs. There weren’t pensions in those days so Washburn gave them his house in Merced to live in.

A nice thing about the hotel we were told is that “it doesn’t have TV or telephones or web access – and cell phone reception is spotty.”

Indeed who needs that when surrounded by Nature’s majesty?

The Ahwahnee Hotel, farther into the valley may be the Park’s signature hotel. However, the Wawona impresses us as an inn that slowly came to life and grew in those beautiful surroundings whereas the Ahwahnee seems rather contrived. It is exactly that. A wealthy business man, Stephen Mather, complained so often to the government about federal fecklessness in promoting Yosemite that he was finally invited to Washington, DC in the early 1920’s to become the Director of the National Park Service!

He created the hotel and the Great Hall of the Ahwahnee to impress affluent and influential travelers (mostly wealthy businessmen and politicians) who’d want to come if they could be assured comfort – but if they came they’d support the National Park concept. The hotel was completed in 1927. It became a convalescent hospital for the US Navy in 1943 which explains its brief appearance in the 1954 movie “The Caine Mutiny.”

Percy Whatley, the executive chef, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, has served the hotel for more than 15 years. He feels what guides his menus is his close farm-to-table relationship with local farmers. He believes: “Let the food speak for itself, treat it simply and let it shine.” He calls this concept of buying fresh produce locally his “look in first” option. He is charmed that a big company like his hotel can work so well with small producers and often he will take the entire output of a local farmer.

Yosemite View Lodge is another choice for overnight accommodation. It sits like Tenaya Lodge just outside a park entrance, in this case the west entrance. The rooms lie alongside the Merced river, a most soothing white noise for San Diegans who are more subjected to the downtown “noise idiots” -- engineers blowing their train whistles far too loudly, the reason being others in San Diego are sleeping but they are not.

The lodge, privately owned, has 335 king and double queen suites, three pools, five spa tubs, a restaurant, a shuttle to the park and perfect for those who have been on vacation for several days rather than just arriving, the lodge has laundry facilities.

Touring the Park 

Beyond the simple fun of hiking the 800 miles of trails, driving the 196 miles of paved roads, or bicycling the 20 paved bicycle paths then crashing at some of the famous lodges in the park, visitors can enjoy organized tours.

Yosemite Model T Tours allow you to see the park by Model T. When Henry Ford produced his first Model T in October 1908 people lived and died within 50 miles of where they were born. In the earlier times of U.S. western exploration, a horse would have great difficulty in covering 30 miles in a day. You could buy the Ford Model T for $380 which partly accounts for the fact the car could claim 70 percent of the world market by 1922. More than 15 million were produced over its 19 years, “a staggering number considering the era.”

A one-day rental costs $400 for the car (either Model T or A) and $50 for the insurance. “Is it difficult to drive such an old car?” we asked. “It is easy,” was the reply. “Remember most people had only driven a horse when they sat in their first Model T!”

David and Sheran Woodworth, the same couple who own the collection of antique Fords, also run a B & B called, naturally enough, the Tin Lizzie Inn. It is in Fish Camp two miles from the South Entrance to Yosemite. They run longer tours outside the Park also and even offer pickup at Fresno, the nearest airport.

Bug Bus Yosemite Tours is an alternative. That’s Bug Bus by the way, not Big Bus. You will be in a van but with an experienced driver whose company’s claim is: “We know Yosemite.” They also maintain the food is great at their lodge and they got that right. The lodge, 25 miles from the West Entrance is rustic but the rooms have been decorated with flair. They are nice people and well thought of locally. With a 2-night package you’ll stay at the Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort but they will pick you up at San Francisco airport and take you around Yosemite paying all entrance fees and taxes. If you want a more wilderness experience they have experienced guides.

Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad has been called a “ride into history.” Indeed the ride goes back to 1899 when, until 1931, the Madera Sugar Pine Lumbar Company used powerfully built locomotives to haul about one and a half billion board feet of lumber out of the Sierra mountains. Two of its steam locomotives take tourists on a four-mile trip through the forest short of the south entrance to the park. There’s a small museum and gift shop and a sandwich shop. Kids love the trip.

Mariposa Agri-Nature Trail runs a variety of tours on certain dates, mostly weekends. The tour visits an alpaca farm, a native plant garden, a stable that offers pony rides, a working bakery, an old schoolhouse that was saved from being demolished, a winery, a farm where loofa sponges are processed and even a place where demonstrations are made on dog and cat care. Great for families.

Wineries. 

Mount Bullion Vineyard is run by Harold and Kris Casto; Kris is one of the enthusiastic persons involved in the Agri-Tours. They started growing vines in the Sierra foothills in 1997. The county it’s said, is “above the fog, below the snow, where time stands still.” It doesn’t stand still in vineyards. Wine making is hard work but very gratifying to those entranced with it. It really is a work of love.

Chappell Winery is owned by Doug and Kathy Chappell who previously were Ventura County teachers with a family summer house here that burned down in the wildfire of 1990. They moved to Mariposa, bought 45 acres of sloping, rocky clay land and followed their passion, growing wines. Initially they sold their grapes to Silver Fox Winery but in 2004 branched out on their own.

Silver Fox Vineyards has been around since 1989. Marvin and Karen Silver, the owners, farm their 2.5 acres themselves. Like most winegrowers they embrace their altitude of 3,000 feet which gives them warm days and cool nights. The Mariposa vineyards are ideal for complex reds.

Butterfly Creek Winery is even older, dating back to 200 acres purchased in 1972 by the Gerken family. John and Colleen Gerken have an interesting family; three members have pilot licenses and numerous aviation signs are distributed on the premises where Bob Gerken, the son, makes his wine. This is the largest winery in Mariposa County. Apparently it was common for large European vineyards to have a small church on their land and Butterfly Creek winery has one too, a most photogenic chapel that can be used for weddings.

The little chapel seemed to demonstrate the spirit of this farming community, this county of Mariposa and the very national park itself. Its tranquility seemed to be sending a message.

Indeed, when we asked a man who lived in nearby Mariposa what he thought visitors got from the Yosemite experience, he said, “What some tourists miss is the serenity. Sometimes people look at something and don’t really notice its components.”

“You mean they see only the big picture?” we asked.

“They don’t even see the big picture,” he murmured sadly.

“Please tell your readers not to be like that.”