We’re up early this morning to drive to Devil’s Postpile before the gates close to personal cars at 7am. There are busses after that, but we prefer being in control of our travel times for a change. We take the short hike to the monument, and Waterboy squeezes in a little bit of fishing while the kids wade in the river. On a whim I looked to see if there were any open campsites in Yosemite (there usually aren’t on short notice), and I was surprised to find a single site at Hodgdon Campground. We have to drive through or around Yosemite to get to the Airbnb in two days and see this as a way to get a little bit closer. Camp is packed up an hour later, and we head for Yosemite.
We stop at the Tuolumne Meadows Post Office to pick up a set of resupply boxes we were supposed to have hiked to. We run into a couple familiar faces from the trail and catch up on the last couple weeks. It feels weird to be at a trail stop talking to other hikers but not having hiked here. We definitely miss being on trail but know we’ll be back on soon enough as everything seems to have a way of working out.
We get to camp late in the afternoon realizing we should have checked the weather and campground elevation. Tuolumne Meadows was pleasant in the upper 70’s but we dropped a lot of elevation getting to camp and arrive to mid-80’s at camp. The first hour is hot, but it cools after that and the night is comfortably cool.
Despite being in one of the smaller Yosemite campgrounds it seems to be just as loud as the others we’ve stayed at. Yosemite is absolutely beautiful, but for whatever reason a lot of campers here seem to care little for quiet and we can hear people partying late into the evening. It’s a different culture than we’ve experienced at most of the National Parks we’ve visited. It may be that the big parks like Yosemite attract a lot of first time campers, or it’s just a California thing with how comfortable people seem to be crammed on top of each other.
Our plan for the next day is to head into Yosemite Valley and try to stay cool. We start with ice cream for breakfast and then walk back to the Merced River to swim and relax for the next several hours. We decide, albeit too late, to try to make it to the Hetch Hetchy area of the park which has a valley that supposedly would rival the views in Yosemite Valley if it hadn’t been dammed up for a reservoir over 100 years ago. We arrive too late to drive in and instead turn around and drive to our campsite outside the park.
We get to camp around 5pm. It’s still 94 degrees outside, and our site is about to lose shade for the next couple hours. Not feeling like getting cooked in our tents tonight we decide to find a hotel nearer to our Airbnb. We end up in the small town of Twain Harte, and upon checking into our hotel notice a shave ice stand a block away. If you’ve been to Hawaii and had shave ice you’ll know it’s just not the same as snow cones on the mainland. We’ve seen snow cones advertised as shave ice, but they never hold up, until this place, which actually seems to know what they’re doing. We all get the “small” size and down them before heading to our room.
Emge Adventures 
I don’t know what pic is more awe-inspiring… Half-Dome or the small cone 😆
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