Alas, the last leg of our California trip: Yosemite National Park where we stayed in the most amazing cabin called the Birdhouse, which was part of what’s called the Scenic Wonders properties.
The Birdhouse cabin was right next to a babbling creek with an incredible wrap-around porch, grill and hot tub. The cabin had a fully stocked kitchen, huge dining and living room area and a loft space with a King-size bed and two smaller beds, plus plenty of room for our daughter Lotte’s Pack-and-Play.
It was perfect for our two-night stay, even if we did arrive a bit later than we expected to on our first evening.
Our cute little Birdhouse, tucked away and secluded in the woods.
Exploring Yosemite
We caught the scene at Tunnel View, the Yosemite Valley Floor Tour (which takes place on a tractor!), seeing the Bridalveil Falls, having a picnic and checking out the Yosemite Falls, as well. Unfortunately two things we wanted to see — Glacier Point Road and Mariposa Grove which had both Sequoias and Redwoods — were closed because of the ongoing fire.
The views:
Checking out the scenery at Tunnel View. You can see the whole valley from here, and it’s so spectacular.
It lightly drizzled on-and-off during our picnic (that’s Yosemite Falls in the background), but that turned out to be great, because no one else was around!
We didn’t do the actual Yosemite Falls hike, but you can take a short path up to the base, which was really beautiful.
Yosemite was so wonderful and majestic, and I’m so glad we got to take Lotte there. Even at her young age, you can still tell she’s noticing everything, and her favorite thing in the world to do right now is point and babble. She did that a lot along our California journey, and it felt great to be able to tell her exactly what she was looking at … just beautiful ole’ America, which is here for her to enjoy. 
Yosemite makes for a great family travel adventure.
Cheryl Lock is a former magazine, newspaper and website editor turned full-time freelance writer. She has worked on staff at the Daytona Beach News-Journal, More and Parents magazines, as well as for Learnvest, the leading women’s financial website. Her work has also appeared in Newsweek, Forbes, Ladies’ Home Journal, the Huffington Post, AOL Travel and more.
Cheryl was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up moving around every few years as an Army brat. The urge to travel has been with her her whole life. While she calls New York City home, Cheryl makes it a priority to travel as much as possible throughout the year. Some of her favorite places include Iceland, the Great Barrier Beef, Cabo, Rome, Calabria and Munich, although she hopes to never stop exploring. Cheryl blogs about her travel adventures (and what’s happening in and around New York City) at Weary Wanderer.
