Katrina's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

My trip up to Wawona.

So what did you do yesterday? Well I went up to Wawona to check out the hotel and resturant since Pine Resorts was a bust. :)

Ok it all started out and instead of leaving my house at 9:30am it ended up around 9:45am. Not totally late, but since the traffic on 99 has just been God aweful on the weekends the drive to my mom would end up being a 45 minute drive. The drive isn't bad or anything, just people playing Speed Police and feeling they have the right to try and make you go what they feel is safe.

I thought from my mom's house we'd go straight to Wawona, but instead we needed to drop my niece off at her other grandparent's house for a birthday party...and then the fun began... So we're going down Ave. 21 and we're looking for a road that will cross over and take us to highway 41. We think we found a road so we take it and it's all mountain, two lane, close together. I really dislike mountain roads every since my accident on one so I drive really slow. My mom hates freeways, but is really good at back roads. Finally after a long long back road huge side trip trek we find ourselves in familiar surroundings and head to Yosemite (Wawona is a few miles in.). Well my mom didn't realize the place was in Yosemite and I had no idea it would cost us 20 bucks to get into a National Park so it took all of my lunch money I had brought with me. My mom says about 10 years ago they raised the fee from 5 to 20 bucks. I don't remember ever having to pay, but the last time I went was when I was in 7th grade. XD

We find the hotel and restaurant. I miss the air up there already, after a few minutes the pressure under my eyes went away and my nose started to clear up. We had a really great lunch there, Salmon with spinich and roasted new potatoes, and the desserts were really great. I had the Chef's cake creation which was a thin layer of chocolate cake with a chocolate coffee moose with chocolate sliver chunks in it a la mode. My mom had their apple and blueberry crisp a la mode. Nice slices of apple in a thick blueberry sauce with a granola crust on top. After eating the food, being served by a really great waiter (I mean my mom willingly gave him a large tip.) and the view outside the window we knew this was the place. I just have to call them and see how they would handle a dinner reservation at 4 for 40ish people. They close from 1-5pm and I don't want to hold it at 5 since if people don't want to stay they need plenty of time to get down. We also decided we'd give those that RSVP 20 dollars to get into the park. It's one thing to have them pay for their own rooms if they want to stay there, but it's something else to have them pay to get into the place to begin with. XD

After our lunch we decided to go to the waterfall since we paid 20 bucks to get in we might as well look around. My mom drove and only freaked me out 3 or 4 times on the way up there. They have busses that shuttle people around to help keep the forest beautiful, but my lord those roads were NOT made for BUSES! Going up was ok, but back down was bad. I'd take a mountain wall vs. nothingness beside you any day.

I have never seen so many Asians besides on TV and when I went to UC Davis to check it out! I mean bus loads of them. It seems Yosemite is a very hot spot to visit. I'd seen pictures and pretty much every Asian country has forests like Yosemite so I don't get the big deal, maybe it's bragging rights? It was very sad when we got to the falls because of how little water there was. I mean it seemed more like a stream then anything. A huge change from last year when pretty much everything was wet from so much water. (My mom went last year.)

So we had our fun and decided it was time to go home. The way down was nice...until we took my mom's short cut which ended up not being so short. It seems that the road we took to get up loops around so when we took the same road as a short cut we ended up at the same place we did going up to Yosemite...5 miles from Coarsegold. Meaning if we had just gone straight going up we would have cut 45+ minutes off our time it took to get us up there since the road we turned right to head to Coarsegold turns out to technically be Ave. 21!! So my planned day trip where I'd get home around 5 ended up me being home about 7 instead. Well worth it though since I really hope Wawona works with us!

I need to ask for some time off in November. My mom's going down to San Diego to watch my Aunt and Cousin race so I'm going to go with her. She doesn't like small freeways so driving in that mess would probably freak her out. I love that sort of driving and it's pretty much a free vacation except for the gas I'll be buying. I'm just not sure if my niece and her friend will be alive by the time we end up in San Diego since the last trip I took with them they drove me insane.

She also told me in 4 years she plans on going to France and Italy and asked if I wanted to go too. I do so I need to save up. It's going to be a 2 week trip so I'm going to have to use all of my vacation time that year. It will be well worth it though. :) I was worried about getting a passport, but my mom says since my old one is a dimplomatic passport it's realllllly easy to get a new one. Finally something comes in handy from my childhood! I missed out on all of the cool stuff like speeding and not being given a ticket and stuff like that.

TTFN!