Wilderness!!! Or How to Survive Camping Near a Wildfire

Well, mostly.

I live in San Francisco.  I love it, I think it is one of the most wonderful cities.  That being said, I love the mountains.  I spent many summer vacations visiting Lake Tahoe as a kid.  I don't ski, and I don't rock climb but I love the mountains.  The smell of pine and wood smoke makes me so happy.  My parents a few years ago FINALLY bought a house on the west shore of Lake Tahoe (seriously, after 20 years of looking) thus ensuring many more years of time spent in Tahoe with my family.

This is seriously one of my favorite places and it's in my state

I would like to think I'm more outdoorsy than I actually am.  I like camping but you're not going to find me backpacking anytime soon.  I went to Outdoor Ed, just like most of the other kids in public schools in San Mateo County.  It was great,send a bunch of kids from the 'burbs to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a week and give them a working knowledge of the woods and ecology.  It was so great I went back in high school as a cabin leader.  I like exploring nature, and thankfully, California has a lot of different kinds of nature.

When I was in middle school, there was a school trip to Yosemite.  It was awesome.  Literally, awe inspiring.  It was December, and it snowed.  It snowed a lot.  It snowed more than the program leaders had seen in a long time.  We were a whole bunch of kids from the San Francisco Bay area who had only ever seen a light dusting of snow on the local mountaintops and had never seen falling snow in our lives.  It was great.  So even though it was crazy snowy, and we were hiking miles and miles in the snow for a week, I loved every second of it, and I absolutely fell in love with the jaw-droppingly beautiful landscape that is Yosemite National park.  I could not wait to go back.  We went in April of 8th grade too, just as much fun, and almost as much snow.  My love of the outdoors was not satiated.

Fast forward to August 2013.  My boyfriend and I enjoy camping every now and then, so we decided to go camping in Yosemite.  He'd never been.  I somehow through some sort of miracle managed to get campsites reserved for one night each.  We get everything ready and make sure we have all the stuff we're going to need.  Then the Rim Fire started.  We seriously considered canceling our trip,and I spent many anxious days looking at air quality reports for Yosemite.  After much deliberation we decided to go up anyway, even though the main entrance to the park was closed due to the fire.  I am so glad we went.

We arrived in Yosemite Valley through "the back route"  which has some VERY SCARY roadways.  The tradeoff for these extremely harrowing roads are the INCREDIBLE views you are greeted with as you drive into the park.

There were more views that were prettier, but I was driving

We got to our campsite, set up our tent and made dinner practically in the shadow of Half Dome.  It was amazing.  We had no cell phone reception, but we spent the evening sitting by a campfire looking up at the stars while eating roasted marshmallows.  It was magical.

Our surprisingly spacious campsite

I set up the stove, after failing to build a fire

Xander proved his ability to make fire

And I made Dinner

 We went to sleep listening to the wind in the trees and awoke to this:

I wish I could breakfast here everyday

 We had breakfast and decided to go for a short hike before we had to check out of our campsite and head up out of the Valley to our second campsite.

Xander didn't want to leave this spot, and neither did I.  It was just so peaceful.

Now remember that GIANT wildfire I mentioned earlier?  The air quality in the Valley was fine, and it seemed like there were fewer people than there might have been otherwise because of the fire.  On our way back to our campsite from our hike, we stopped at the ranger's station and asked if Crane Flat was open.  The ranger informed us it was closed and if we had a reservation it had been refunded.  We looked at the nice man with bewilderment I'm sure and asked if there was room for that night at our current campground.  He said it was full, but if we hurried, we might be able to get a spot down the road at Camp 4, which being in the valley was not affected by the fire.  We thanked him and hurried to PACK OUR SHIT.  I think we just threw stuff into the car.  I was really glad we had done our dishes from breakfast before our hike.

Tune in next time for the continuing tale of Jessamy and Xander in Yosemite!