Wanna Get Away?

School starts next week! School starts next week. (Exclamation point from me and R, but just a plain ol' period from those still needing to receive an education.) After a busy and stressful couple of weeks at work, I had hoped to take a quick trip somewhere before the end of summer. Initially I was looking at visiting some of the NPS sites east of San Francisco (plus there's another Six Flags in the same area where we could use our passes), but those sites are only open for tours on certain days (one of which requires 2 weeks advance reservation for security clearance), and that just wouldn't work with our schedule. :(

On a whim, I called the reservation line at Yosemite to see if there were any last-minute cancellations. Normally they accept reservations 366 days in advance – from what I was told, you need to call right when the lines open at 7AM, because all openings for lodging are gone within the first hour or so. (We're not campers, so I'm not sure if the campsite reservations work the same way.) But you must cancel within 7 days of arrival in order to get your deposit (1 night) back.

And that’s how we got lucky and scored a reservation at Curry Village for two nights. Even better was that the opening was for a cabin *with* bath! The boys were already not that enthused about going away (whose children are these?!), so if we had gotten a tent cabin instead and had to walk to a nearby bathroom/shower, I’m sure they would have mutinied. Like I said before, we are so not campers…

Anyway, the other nice thing about the way this worked out was that neither son had to miss playing in his basketball game today (both of whom played really well, BTW). So after the sweaty messes cleaned themselves up, we loaded the minivan and hit the road. After our last road trip in July through Ohio in a rental car, I must say that having a bigger car/minivan makes a BIG difference in the enjoyment of all those travelling in it… more space = more comfort (i.e. food at your fingertips, room to stretch out and nap), more comfort = less fighting and complaining = a much happier mom and dad!

Three and half hours later, we were at our hotel in Fresno, but not without some drama along the way… helicopters dropping water on a brushfire east of I-5 near Gorman, and J waking up from a nap only to realize that he left his iPod Touch at home. For dinner we walked across the street to BJ’s, where our conversation centered around whom they would draft for their rec league basketball dream team, and we all got to practice “boxing out” over our shared Pizookie. Then it was back to the hotel where the boys splashed around in the bathtub-sized swimming pool for a while.

Going to bed early, since we still have over an hour’s drive to Yosemite tomorrow!