Camp Curry
Camp Review:
Unsurprisingly, the cabins have stayed exactly the same as last time.
What I Learned:
I forget how loud the snow is when it falls on the canvas roof of the tent. It would be annoying if I didn’t love snow so much.
What Happened?
My girls were clamoring for snow and due to the dry December, I was not able to take them to the mountains. In the first week of January, I saw on the Yosemite webcam that there was finally snow on the Yosemite Valley floor—so I booked the heated canvas tents for my next weekend with the girls.
We arrived around midnight and settled ourselves into our tent as quietly as possible. Thankfully, the heater was already on and it meant that the tent and bedding were nice and warm for us.
The next morning, we woke up to a paradise filled with snow that was under assault from freezing rain! We still made the best of it and shuttled over to the Ahwahnee hotel after breakfast. Miraculously, as we snacked in the grand hall, the rain turned to snow and Yosemite was transformed into a winter wonderland. The girls played in the garden until we got hungry, then took the shuttle to Degnan’s for soup and sandwiches.
With our hunger satiated, we perused the Yosemite Village store and the new welcome center. At the village store, Annabelle picked up a personal sled for Sunday. At the welcome center, Kaylee picked up a stuffed bear tagged with the number 34 (the same bear that we had seen in a bear information video the day before) and I picked up small animal pins for all three of us. By this time, the magic was gone and it was raining once more, so we made it back to the tent to dry off and warm up.
We rested and warmed up for a few hours when we went to the Seven Tents Pavilion for dinner, where they were serving the two exact dishes that they had served when I hiked Half Dome in October (Baked Ziti and Half Roast Chicken). Given that the last time I had the Ziti it was only half cooked, we ordered a combo pizza from the Pizza Deck and enjoyed that instead. Though, it was a little too much lactose for Annabelle that day, so we went back to the tent afterward (due to the rainy weather, the ice skating rink was sadly closed). The rest of the night would have been drama-free, except that the power went out for about 30 minutes. It would have been worse except that the heater never turned off (the fans did, so our tent was slightly colder) and our headlamp was almost as bright as the lamp that had turned off.
The next morning, we woke up lazily, got packed lazily, and headed off to Tuolumne Grove for sledding... lazily. Sometimes, lazily is just the perfect speed.