This winter holidays, our family went back to Yosemite National Park in California. I mentioned went back before we have spent multiple winter breaks there, the last time in 2018. Whenever we travel in the United States (and in most overseas destinations too) we typically like to rent a house. With our family of 4 it is easier than way, as we can spread out and have our personal rooms, living room and kitchen. We love to cook while at holidays, makes it like 'living'. So we rented this cabin in the woods in the Yosemite West.
No, it doesn't come with a car. That Ford Expedition is a rental, picked up from SFO airport:) Although it looks like it is a house in the middle of no where, it is actually not. It is well spaced from the next house, but it is infact a neighborhood right outside the park entrance of the Wawona Road, for those of your who are familiar with the area. I am coming here in this particular neighborhood for last 20 years, and now this is well built-up compared to even 10 years back.
The cabin is average, nothing too fancy. Believe be, these houses can get very fancy in this area. We preferred a property at the corner, far away from the next house and well into the woods. The deck at the 2nd level is good for lunch and hanging out. Nights were chilly, otherwise, it is excellent place to have dinner too. It is winter, so foliage is a bit grey, unless you get very close to a water source.
The house had an external 1000 gallons propane tank, and a Natural Gas generator. The whole house, the power, cooktop, heating, everything can be off the grid if needed. This area can get a lot of snow, but power lines are external, so the houses here can loose power during a major snow storm (we didn't get any meaningful snow, California was very dry in late 2023).
With the home base set, the way to travel Yosemite with kids is to simply do day hikes, as many as they are willing to do. In the Yosemite valley floor there are a lot of kid-friendly hikes. Over the years, I have done every single hikes, so now it almost doesn't matter which one I do. It takes the stress out of the equation. We hike, sit down somewhere, have the kids paint/ draw something, get up and walk again.
Life is simple, even if the vista a stark and barren, often cold. I can simply look up at the Yosemite falls and talk geology to my kids all I want. I talked to them about the last Ice Age, the Pleistocene glaciation. They are quite familar thanks to the Movie Ice Age:) What those movies does is arouse interest in kids, then we can get the facts straight and inform them with additional scientific fact. We talked in in detail about Younger Dryas, a life that is described in the USGS publication but not in detail
https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/sim3414
The simplest figure is here at the Wikipedia. In general it is a time about 15K - 11K years before present when the planet gotten really cold for the last time, and at the end of Younger Dryas, the planet suddenly started warming again, melting all the glacial ice covering the Yosemite valley floor where we were standing. My younger really loves that the time is named after a flower.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-younger-dryas/
Source
It was a warm afternoon at the valley, and my younger was lying down on a log listening to my story about younger dryas, and the breech of the ice dam of Lake Missoula that followed the flood in the western US. It is a facinating story, and maybe someday I will do a proper justis to it.
But until then they get to listen, relax, and enjoy hiking on the moss covered granites at various trails. Yosemite can be very monochromatic in the winter, that's why all the big walls like the El Capitan below is almost always shot better in B&W.
So here is the big wall of mighty El Cap in bright morning light! If that doesn't wake up your inner naturalist, I don't know what will:)
