Yosemite and other National Parks I have known...

In my teen years my parents began a series of vacation trips throughout the western States. Looking back, I'm a little puzzled about that. My folks were not vacation-trip people; we took no major trips before that era, and they stopped soon afterward, but during that period we took to the road. And how.

We camped on all those trips, with only one or two mid-trip stays in motels to get ourselves and our clothes washed and ready to go again. For the first couple of trips we tented in a big, heavy, paraffin-soaked tent that my father designed and my mother sacrificed a sewing machine to make. Later my own family camped in that tent a few times. Even later putting up the tent became an annual play event at Mom's school. It may still be in use - Mom finally gave it to James, the custodian at the school.

The trailer came next. Pops designed it and got some help from Ed Roger's shop students to weld the frame, then he and Mother constructed a pop-up body. Set the braces, turn the handle and raise the outer shell high enough to make a unit you could stand up in. Most of you know that trailer retired to the lake. I haven't looked lately - it may still be there.

I'm unclear at this point what the trip itineraries were, and the more I think about that the greater my sense of loss for not knowing. At this point, there is no way I can ever sort them out with any certainty. I know most of the landmarks we visited, but I'm fuzzy on some. There are points of interest along the routes that we took but I cannot be positive we stopped at them, though I believe we did. I am sure of the major camping grounds and Parks; there were lesser camping spots that were memorable and some routes are simply forgotten.

Others came with us on some of these trips - Grandmother Anderson on one; the Woods family on another. We picked up Aunt Ina in Boulder on one trip. She was studying at the University of Colorado that summer.

I do know that during this period we camped in these National Parks and Recreational areas: Grand Canyon - both North and South rims. Grand Teton, Canyon de Chelly , Glen Canyon, Lake Mead, Bryce Canyon, Zion and Yellowstone. We also camped in National Forests in or near Red River, White Sands, Fort Collins, Ruidoso, Boulder, and several other places I can't remember clearly. And we visited places along the way, such as Sunset Crater, Petrified Forest, and Casa Grande.

I guess some of that wanderlust hung around (for a while, that is; I haven't noticed much of it lately) and Barbara and I added several more National Parks to the list: Carlsbad Caverns, Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Rocky Mountain NP, Dinosaur NM. I bagged Muir Woods while on a business trip to San Francisco. These were non-camping trips, I might add. We're too old to sleep on the ground.

And now, of course Yosemite. Just a relatively short drive from Fresno, Julie and her family have become the official gateway guides to Yosemite for friends and family visiting them (thank you). Third-most visited National Park in the US (After the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon) some 3,431,514 visited Yosemite in 2008. I'm sure our trip helped set a new record in 2009 because I think there were that many people trying to find a parking place in the Village when we were there.

Standing in the Yosemite Valley floor, overwhelmed by the beauty there, I kept thinking back to all those other parks and visits. It was a wonderful experience. Then and now.