Day 33 - We're stumped

 It was another crisp, cloudless evening for sleeping and I have to say that it just doesn’t get old.  Waking up in the middle of the night and having minimal lights but plenty of stars is a trend I’d be very comfortable repeating for a long time.

Today was scheduled to be a reasonably short transfer day to an RV park just outside the gates of Yosemite.  Since there wasn’t any sightseeing to do at the RV park, we decided to make the most of the morning and went over to the stump garden to hike the loop there.  All four of us say that this was worth seeing because while it was sad that many of the sequoias were cut down in the past, it was great to be able to hike among the stumps and really appreciate how large the trees are.  

As I mentioned before, trying to describe the size of these trees is impossible, but in the Stump Garden is the “Mark Twain stump” which was cut down and sections of it were sent to various museums to be put on display.  Nobody out East believed that the trees could get to this size and so the log was presumed to be a fake (shipment had required that they cut it up into sections to be put back together).  Hopefully this helps put the size into perspective, but if not, here’s me on top of the stump.

After finishing the stump garden loop we headed back to camp, packed up the camper, and started back down the slope we went up on the way into the park.  If you remember, the temperature dropped 20 degrees on our way up into the park.  Well the same thing happened in reverse on the way down the road out of the park.  We were back in the valley and it was HOT.

But with the valley came more views of farms so I was happy! However we eventually turned to the east and started getting out of the valley and back into the mountains.  We stopped for gas and then Amy noticed that the “adventure” part of our adventure had returned.  I had been having issues with it, but Amy observed that somewhere between camp and our gas stop, the handle for our door had fallen off.  This was a bit of a problem because it’s the ONE way to get into the camper.  

So, instead of a direct route to the RV park, we diverted to a couple of auto/tractor supply shops but without any luck.  I came up with a temporary solution (flat razor blades duct taped together until they were the width of the lock mechanism, but we’d need to come up with something better soon.  The good news for us was that once we got through the night, we wouldn’t need the door for a couple of days because we were staying in the tents of Curry Village in Yosemite for the next couple of days. 

We made it to the RV park, set up with our temporary “key”, and then hit the pool.  The pool was 8 feet deep and so Robinson practiced learning to dive.  While there were a few belly flops (we’ve all been there), he eventually started to get it.  He also spent some of his pool time learning to do the breast stroke.  He’s a fast learner and pretty soon he was covering the full length of the pool wiht the new stroke.

Once we were all done with the pool, we decided that with the “adventure” arriving, a night eating out was in order.  We inquired at the front desk and they sent us down the road to the local pizza place.  It was so good we finished the first pizza, ordered a second, and nearly finished it!  We took the last couple of leftover pieces back to camp for breakfast tomorrow.

While it wasn’t the day we drew up on paper, we certainly enjoyed the stump garden and the handle turned out to not be so bad and it’s another day on the road.