This is my third time traveling to Yosemite National Park. I was reminiscing about the contrast between my life now and ten years ago. Before meeting Christine, I didn’t even know that Yosemite existed! Christine’s friends have been traveling to Yosemite every year, and this marks their tenth group trip.
I learned that what Christine enjoys the most about the trip is cooking a meal for the whole group, and seeing the group enjoy the meal. During the week leading up to the trip, Christine starts stocking up the fridge with ingredients, and later we split up the costs. This year, she made a salsa verde pot-roasted pork dish, which we ate on our first night. The second night we had another couple’s cheese sandwich and tomato bisque, and last we had Jeff’s sous-vide chili and cornbread.
For years, Christine and Jeff had been dreaming of floating down the river in Yosemite on a boat. They had seen other groups do it and it looked very peaceful. After years of hiking, this was the year we went the boat route.
On Thursday afternoon, part of the group went biking in Yosemite, while six of us chilled in the pool back at the house. The pool felt freezing in contrast to the hot weather in Ahwahnee, and we all struggled to get in. We would take long pauses shivering at ankle height and thigh height. Even after dipping completely under, I felt like my body couldn’t adjust to the water temperature. David was the only one who shocked us by jumping straight in.
On Friday, we gathered our boats and headed to the river! We went there with three cars, parking one car at the Cathedral Beach Picnic Area. Then we drove to North Pines Campground, where we inflated the boats and started the river journey. The idea was that once we reached Cathedral Beach, instead of walking all the way back upstream to North Pines, we would use that first car to drive the other drivers back to retrieve the remaining vehicles. We had one group of five people get on a large boat; Christine and I got on a two-person boat. Jen and Crystal each got on a tube and attached themselves to the larger boat.
The initial hour was pretty rough! We started off by attaching all four watercraft—the two tubes and two boats—with ropes, but very quickly some of us got caught on bushes or tree trunks, causing us to separate multiple times. The tube crew was in the most precarious position since they didn’t have any oars. Once they lost their rope attachment, they somehow managed to reunite with the large boat using just their hands and feet. I have no idea how they pulled it off. But given their deep experience with nature and camping, if anyone could do it, it was them.
Our two-person boat also got stuck multiple times. We hadn’t really thought through how we would maneuver it. We just followed the manual, attaching the two oars to the hooks on the boat. Shortly after taking off, we realized we weren’t rowing properly and couldn’t figure out how to split up the work. Later, looking at the packaging, I realized the boat was actually designed for just one person in the back to row, while the person in the front acts as a passenger.
Not knowing this at the time, we made the mistake of detaching the oars from the hooks so we could row independently. With my lack of rowing experience, I failed hard at trying to coordinate my strokes with Christine’s to steer. After the initial rush, Christine decided she should row alone from the back to get the steering right. This required us to swap positions while floating. During the swap, the boat’s rope got caught around Christine’s ankle, causing the boat to swivel sharply and take on a lot of water. Suddenly, we were stuck against a large tree trunk.
Jeff parked his boat by the shore and came to help us. He and Christine stood on the log and managed to push the boat back toward the center of the river. I tried to row to the shore, but because I was doing it wrong—rowing in one direction with only one oar—the boat just kept spinning in circles. Christine was getting scared, joking later that she thought she might lose me to the river forever. Eventually, Jeff just walked out into the middle of the river and pulled me ashore.
Phew. After that, there were a couple of close encounters, but Christine kept a watchful eye out for logs and rowed steadily to keep us in the center. I just sat in the front of the boat and stared at the scenery. It was incredible. We were much closer to the rock formations than you ever get while biking or hiking. You could really feel the massive scale of the mountains, with no car windows to block the view.
Things were continuously falling from the trees into the water—leaves, branches, pine needles. The river didn’t look pristine, but it was alright. Thousands of leaves floated serenely alongside us as we drifted downstream. After four hours on the water, we arrived at our destination, deflated the boats, and headed home.
On Saturday, most of the group got up at 3:00 AM to see the sunrise in Yosemite. Crazy. We could never pull that off. I can get up that early, but I wouldn’t have the energy to hike at an incline afterward. Three of us stayed behind and headed out to Bass Lake for a super easy option: the Way of the Mono Trail, a 1-mile loop next to the parking lot. It turned out to be much steeper than other walking routes we had done, but it was a great hike overall. We kept walking for over an hour before realizing we had taken a wrong detour and ended up on an entirely different trail. We finished with a 2-mile hike that day.
Afterward, we had lunch at a restaurant in the Pines Resort area. The waiters there were pretty insistent about asking if we had plans after lunch. I think they were trying to upsell boat tours while they had tourists at the table.
In the evening, we watched Crazy Rich Asians and got to see three Jenga master champions duke it out for supremacy. They piled the tower incredibly high until one player decided there wasn’t a single block left that could be moved safely. Instead of pulling a block and crashing the tower, they called “Jenga” to surrender. Apparently, under their rules, when you surrender you can call the game and defer to the next player.
On the way home, we stopped by Bakersfield for lunch and got delicious birria tacos that were spectacular—nearly as good as the ones we had in DC.
