Long exhausting drives aren't good for us

The rest of the drive was rather unmemorable, although we did marvel at how quickly the landscape changed from tall mountains and blue ocean, to a desert landscape with almost no greenery, to flat flat and dry land all the way back to the tall green mountains of the Sierra Nevada.

We finally arrived at the south entrance of Yosemite and were pulling up to the Mariposa Grove at about 5 p.m. We were exhausted, sick of the car, and then we see the sequoias towering ahead of us. The parking lot was pretty much full and visitors were everywhere—big tour groups, families with young kids, and just people, people, people.

It's only a short walk from the parking lot to the Grizzly Giant (estimated to be more than 1,800 years old!), so we, along with everyone else, headed down the paved path. The grove was fascinating, with trees so big it's hard to imagine. At one spot a fallen sequoia lies next to the path and standing next to the base of the tree, and seeing that it's still several feet taller than you, it becomes clear that the trees are not only tall, but also very wide. When we reached the Grizzly Giant, we quickly realized that a photograph would never show the immensity of these trees. Truthfully we were a little put off by the amount of people on the trails, and hoped it wouldn't be case throughout the park.

We got back in the car and headed to Yosemite Valley. We were 30 miles away, but it was another mountainous route. The whole way we were debating what we should do for dinner—go to Yosemite Village in the Valley and eat at one of the restaurants, skip the valley altogether and go to our B&B and find someplace to eat near there, or look for food on the way to the B&B. We decided to go to the Yosemite Valley (we were in Yosemite National Park, after all), and we pulled up to a line of stopped cars, about 4 miles from Yosemite Village.

A traffic jam in a National Park.

At 7 p.m.

It was unreal.

We creeped our way down the road, tired, hungry, and unhappy. Finally an hour later, we parked at Yosemite Village and explored our dining options, which were sparse and ridiculously crowded. We made the decision to just keep on driving to our B&B (about 35 miles away) and hope (and pray) that we'd find a restaurant that was open on the way.

Let me just say that this whole drive from the Grove to the Vally to the B&B, did not comprise of of our finest moments. In fact, at one point we were so tired and annoyed at random traffic jams and didn't know which way to turn when we finally started moving again that we threw our Yosemite newspaper at each other. Yes. We resorted to throwing sheets of paper at one another. It was oddly therapeutic.

After that incidence, the delirium set in and when we finally found a restaurant open (it was about 9 p.m. by then) we ran in and ordered food.