This is What it Takes to Make a Yosemite Reservation

Apparently, you need to have your sister on IM so that you can communicate with her about what the hell you’re doing.
You must also have in your possession and turned on:

1. Laptop with Government Parks account already set up and on the page where you make the reservation preferably already on the campsite you want.
2. An iPad in the same state as the above laptop except signed onto a different account (i.e. my husband’s that I made up for him at 6:55 a.m.)
3. A Phone already dialed to the reservation number so all you have to do is hit ‘call.’
4. A litany of curse words handy for doling out to yourself in a whispered tone as to not awake anyone in your house.

Soooo that’s what Amy and I did this morning.  My mom is turning 60 this year and we wanted to do something fun for her that she would like.  Now, if any of you know my mother you know these things.  She cannot handle sitting around at a  party for anyone (herself included) and NOT do anything.  She must help cook or clean or arrange or something.  And she will always say she doesn’t want us to do anything for Mother’s Day, her birthday, my parents’ anniversary, whatever occasion we might celebrate.

But, my mom loves camping.  When we were kids Amy and I were in Girl Scouts and we went camping all the time.  She most always came along either as our leader or a chaperone.  Even without Girl Scouts we went camping plenty.  I’m grateful to my parents for loving and taking us camping so often because I think it’s one of the greatest, cheapest vacations.  I can’t wait to take Emma.

We thought she’d love to go to Yosemite for her birthday and just do a camping trip with our family, her brothers and sisters and their families.  My aunts & uncles that don’t like roughing it will stay at the hotel there, but the rest of us had to get a reservation.  My mom had the unfortunate luck to be born the day after 4th of July which means no way in heck were we getting a reservation anywhere for that weekend, but we decided to try for the weekend after.

Having all of my devices ready to go at 7 a.m. on the dot I began hitting ‘book now’ and ‘call’.  All I got was a busy signal and a ‘campsite is not available’.  Going back to the campsite map, literally every site was booked.  It took less than 2 minutes.  Frantically, my sister and I are IM-ing back and forth and I found another campground in Yosemite that still had sites available and we grabbed them. 

We have no idea if we’re anywhere near anything, but at least we know we’ll be in Yosemite with our family celebrating my Mom!  Good job Amy & me!