Monday, August 15th ~ We arrived too early to check into the "lodge" (you'll see shortly why "lodge" is in quotes), so we went on a 2-hour ranger walk/talk around the Tuolumne River with Ranger Brian and learned about the wildlife at Tuolumne Meadows: Butterflies (which we saw) to bears (which we didn't see).
Tuolumne River
We checked-in to Tuolumne Meadows Lodge - it's basically tent cabins (think the TV show MASH). Here's Brad (AKA Labor) carting our stuff to our tent.
The "lodge" - now ya see why the quotes! Honestly, it was fun for the few nights we stayed here.
Our cabin - free firewood and hot showers provided.
Each cabin has sleeping for four people. Note the wood burning stove!
Everyday firewood, kindling and newspaper were delivered. We could get more anytime.
Bear boxes - nothing with any odor can be stored in the tents, so there were bear boxes in the parking lot for food items (more on that later) and these were for toiletries.
This is the Dana Fork (one of the two forks, the Lyell Fork being the other) that create the Tuolumne River which begins just a couple miles away.
The restaurant. Reservations were required for dinner every night, and breakfast was line-up-and-wait. Everything was served family-style, so you sat with different people each meal. We enjoyed most of the people we met. We later ran into people we met here while backpacking a few days later, which was cool. Here's the bummer part - the food was NOT good and never changed - same meals, breakfast & dinner - three days in a row. The meals were so "not good" that we were glad we brought extra backpacking food (ya know, the freeze dried stuff) for lunches.
Here's Labor again! Each night before we'd go to sleep, we (read: Brad) got a fire going in the stove, then in the middle of the night put another log on if one of us woke (even Suzanne), then one more log in the morning when we woke. Toasty warm, my friends, toasty warm!!
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