Yosemite Getaway Pt. 1

Months ago, when looking at our family calender, I honed in on one weekend where Timo didn't have a baseball game and it just so happened to be Mother's Day weekend.  I told Young then that I wanted to go to Yosemite for the weekend as my MD gift.  I've been wanting to go for a long long time and knew that May was one of the best times of the year to go because of the snow melt making the waterfalls full.  I also knew it wouldn't be as busy as summer.  It was the perfect weekend to go and I love my husband for making it happen!

We took the kids out of school Friday and left super early in the morning to get up there by lunch...but needed a pit stop to stretch out legs, which ended up as 10am ice cream break...

Our hotel was near the south entrance so as we entered the park we drove the short distance to the Wawona Hotel for lunch and our first of many hikes of the weekend.  The Wawona is a grand old hotel full of history.  It was great walking the grounds thinking of the centuries of people who had walked there before. (the history nerd in me watched a tons of documentaries on Yosemite before we left so I could get the full experience!)

Entertaining the kids during lunch, Cameron and Daddy having a staring contest.  Timo kept blowing puffs of air in their eyes to make them blink so Daddy had to block him....sneaky boy!

After lunch we set off to hike Chilnualna Falls.  We only hiked to the base of the falls, about 1/4 mile in but it was beautiful the whole way.  It follows this loud rushing river, getting louder the closer to falls you get, which is great for keeping the kids going and building excitement.  We were kinda on a timeline because was wanted to get to the Sequoias but it was the perfect hike to start our weekend and we found the perfect hiking sticks that would last the next few days!

We then headed to the giant Sequoias for one more hike of the day.  We did the 1.6 mile round trip hike, which was just lower part of the park, not even up to the groves.  It was just long enough for our little hikers who were starting to fray around the edges after a long day.  We saw lots of wildlife along the way...deer, chipmunks, squirrel, woodpeckers and blue jays.

Any hike is fun as long as you can turn a log into a balance beam or make it a rocket ship!

The famous California Tunnel tree...we asked someone to take a family picture, who ended up taking 4 pictures, all of which were blurry.  (The first of several bad "can you take our picture" photos we got from the weekend).  This was the best out of the set...

We loved the sequoias but it was getting late and we all wanted to get to our hotel and relax, it had been a long day. The Tenaya Lodge is a beautiful lodge and I could tell immediately they catered to families just by the check in.  We ate a full dinner and headed off to bed early to get ready for adventures in Yosemite Valley the next morning...