#52 Escapees Park at Coarsegold California Yosemite

The next day we left out and we went to the Escapes Park at Coarsegold California. They are positioned in a way that you can visit Yosemite or Kings Canyon Sequoia as day trips. Even though this is true any one of these drives is a pretty long day. That's okay because we like escapees’ parks because they're cheap and there's a lot of good social activity at the clubhouse. They’re good people but there is a little bit of an HOA mindset which is not exactly my personality type. As we checked into the park, they mentioned that we needed to read and understand a contract that states we promise not to do laundry in our RV. Apparently when we do this our waste goes into septic tanks and they are very concerned that the chemicals that people use in a laundry will kill the bacteria in the septic tank. They not only ask you not to, you have to read understand and sign a contract saying if you violate this rule you will give them a $1,000 fine. I went ahead and did it with a snarl. They even required India and Savannah to sign it also. Wow.

Skipping forward when it was time to leave, they wanted to be evaluated and I just kind of wrote down that there might have been another way to handle that whole bacteria killing issue. The $1,000 fine threat was really intimidating and made me uncomfortable enough to maybe not stay here again. Maybe just sell biodegradable detergent and then we don't mind you using your laundry. Make it crystal clear that no you can't use any bleach and you have to use bio friendly detergent. That would have been a nice way to do it but that was my criticism for them. We decided to stay 3 days because we were wiped out from all the rushing from the previous week.

I think the first day we just relaxed the second day we drove to Yosemite. I don't think we realize how long it took to get there. I'm pretty sure it took us the better part of two hours. It was a very Wiggly Road so we got there and I believe we stopped at the Mariposa Grove first. At the visitors center they said the Mariposa Grove of giant trees was closed for renovations. That was a drag. We found out there was going to be a one-man monologue show at I think 7 o'clock p.m. all this week at the Valley Theatre area. I think that would have been really good to see so we planned on it and one-man show was John Muir. The actor was the coolest guy ever. The play was fantastic, and the actor nailed heavy Scotch accent. During the day we went and wandered around Yosemite a bit. We got on the shuttle bus and saw a very distinctive feature that everybody knows about called El Capitan.

It’s a very huge hunk of granite and we went up to the top of the hill. What I mean by hill is like seven thousand feet or whatever. We went up there in the truck and saw half dome. It's just a very huge granite pretty thing that everybody needs to take pictures of. It was very pretty, no doubt about it. We just messed around a bit and went on back down the hill and saw that it was 7 o'clock had some dinner saw the play and next thing you know it's around 9 o'clock or so. We left the theater and we couldn't even find our truck. We had to ask the shuttle driver where they think we were from our description. The helped us figure it out and we were very happy about that.

Now it’s like 10 o'clock and we got a two-hour drive. It’s bad enough that we’re smoking like a freight train from the engine, but now we're getting check engine light stuff. This is beyond insane after all the money we just spent. The truck can only go about 20 miles an hour until it clears, and it just goes on like nothing happened. The code cleared at some point and we got to back up to the 60 mile-an-hour ability. With all these problems it takes a little while longer to get home. My assumption is we got home sometime near 1 am and I would say that was a pretty long day.

I remember watching a documentary where someone was visiting Yosemite and they asked John Muir what I should do if I only had one afternoon here at Yosemite. He thought about it and he pointed to the river and said I would go down there to that rock, sit down, put my head down in my hands and cry that I only allowed myself one afternoon to visit here. That does kind of suck because that's exactly what we did. Pretty soon after a day of just kind of farting around at Coarsegold it was about time to go. All I allowed myself is one afternoon and so I didn't cry but I thought about that story. I would return to Yosemite a year later and spend a long week there. The people at Coarsegold insisted we take on a little tour in the golf cart. My assumption is once we see how beautiful it is, we will want to buy or lease or a timeshare. It was a nice little visit with the golf cart lady as she was friendly. It was pretty enough, kind of desert really. Dry now but during the snow melt certainly not dry at all. This was the middle of summer or late summer

This would be a good time to mention how important it is for us to revisit Yosemite in the spring of 2017. We didn't know any better but by late summer there are almost no waterfalls at Yosemite. The falls are one of the more spectacular things about the park. Now that we've learned a few things the peak waterfall season would be middle of May. That's when we would like to revisit. Skipping ahead we returned to Yosemite in May of 2017. I was worried we're not going to make it in time for the spring snow melt. We got there a little late but the water was plentiful. In fact, the water was so plentiful they were in a flood stage situation. Talk about amazing water falls, it was amazing.