After going to the beach, we drove down through the Redwoods.
Literally, through the Redwoods.
And ended up in Russell's Disneyland otherwise known as the Yosemite Valley
We spent the afternoon hiking around and oogling the granite giants.
We then went for a swim. Since we had been road tripping, our car was a bit of a mess and we had a ton of food in there. I was worried about the bears until I saw how many people were around and figured there was no way a bear would come by all of the people.
As we paddled around the river with about 150 others, a bear ambled its way right on past a group of Asian tourists (who later scampered through the woods in their bikinis, chasing the animal down trying to get a picture with it...seriously...its a bear, run! and not towards it!).
After that I was pretty paranoid about coming back to broken windows, so we headed back to our car and started trying to find a place to camp.
We scoped out camp 4, but it was full of families with hardly a climber in site (which really is the only romance of the pit hole known as camp 4), so we headed up the valley to a campground Russ and his buddy Dallas camped at when they were there.
We lost the sun as we ascended out of the valley and arrived at the campground in pitch darkness. Finding flocks of children darting across the roadway in the darkness, led us to parking our car and meandering through the campground trying to find a spot to sleep. We found one open site and figured it was because a large Mexican family (30+ people) had gathered their cars nearby and were blaring Mariachi music to the stars and their local sleeping campers.
I hopped onto the table to wait for Russ to pull the car around when one of the Mother's from the large group walked up to me with a swarm of little kids running around her and informed me they were renting the space for the use of the bear box, she then opened it to show that it was packed to the brim with alcohol "food".
So, we headed out.
We ran into another family who was in our same predicament and they informed us they had just pulled their cars into the trees and were setting up their tents there in a non-site.
Looking at their chocolate smeared children holding giant marshmallows in each hand, I asked the dad (who was holding and eating a whole wheel of cheese, awesome) if there was a random bear box there. He said no, but it was OK they just put all of their food in their car. He then told us we could set up camp next to them. Looking again at his group of little bear snacks kids, we politely declined, drove away. Pulled over to the side of a road and slept in our car hoping the bears wouldn't break in and get our crackers...or rip through the chocolate covered children's tents.
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We successfully made it through the night and climbed at Swan Slab (after meandering around trying to find a short cut to the Grack for a good hour), I got attacked by a giant bug; from which a kind old gentlemen saved me life by swatting it off my rope and stomping it into the ground. Russ got a little souvenir caribiner and promises to come back in peak climbing season when there were actually climbers in camp four.
We then made our way out to stay with some family friends for the night and hit up SIX FLAGS the next day.
I thought bears weren't supposed to be able to smell food in your car??? The accepted practice here in Utah is to put all food in you car with locked doors/closed windows/etc. I don't think there's such a thing as a bear box around here. I'll admit, the whole idea of BEARS BEING OUT THERE when you are camping freaks me out. That is NOT something that is much of an issue in NC! (There are black bears there, but I don't know, they were never near our campsites? We always kept food in our tents and all kinds of stuff!)
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