To Yosemite and Beyond!

After we visited the California Caverns we started our drive to Yosemite. The drive was uneventful, and we reached Yosemite close to dinner time, so we thought we'd enter the park, grab dinner, and go for a hike. Silly us.

We first took the free bus around to a restaurant in the park. Now on foot, we find that the first restaurant was closed--the quick sandwiches from a refrigerator we were hoping to grab were locked up and beyond reach. We thought we were lucky, though, because upstairs was a pizza restaurant; not ideal, but, well, we were hungry so we stood in line. For. A. Long. Time.

We weren't prepared for how slow it would be. It turns out that they were training new staff that night. Or I should say that one manager was training the entire staff. Each group in line took 5-6 minutes to place an order. About 9 orders and 50 minutes later, we finally reached the counter. Needless to say the food took a while as well.

By the time we finally managed to eat our food, the two hours we had alloted to spend at Yosemite were gone, it was getting dark, and it was time to move on--no hike for us, and $20 of park-entry-fee paid for a quick look at Half Dome, a couple glimpses of waterfalls, and access to a restaurant with terrible service. It would have been faster for us to have driven out of the park to a nearby town, eat there at a sit-down restaurant, and return. Live and learn.