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Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Let us pull back the curtain and show you how you can maximize money you're already spending to earn enough credit card points and miles to travel with your family for nearly free.
We've used credit card points and miles to take our family of 5 on trips to places like Costa Rica, San Diego, Disneyland, Oceanside, NYC, Washington DC, Hawaii, and next year we have already booked Paris, Spain and Japan!
Using credit card points and miles (often called travel hacking) doesn't have to be overwhelming or take a ton of time, and we can show you how.
Can you earn a lot of points and miles without opening up multiple credit cards? Only if you have a really high amount of spend each month. For people with larger families, opening new cards is the easiest and fastest way to earn enough points and miles to take a couple of really low cost (but not low budget) family vacations every year!
If you want to learn ways to help you and your family travel more affordably using credit card points, this show is for you.
Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Yosemite National Park with kids + Our Stay at Rush Creek Lodge!
Thanks for finding our podcast! We are a family of 5 who does most of our travel using credit card points and miles and we share how we leverage credit card offers to earn a ton of points/miles so we can afford travel as a larger family.
Follow us on Instagram @TravelPartyof5
The towering sequoias of Mariposa Grove, the refreshing mist from Bridal Veil Falls, and the unexpected joy of watching our typically reserved 11-year-old exclaim "This is amazing!" – our family adventure to Yosemite National Park delivered all this and more.
Our road trip strategy began with renting a hybrid minivan for the 2,000-mile journey, earning American Airlines miles while saving our personal vehicle from mountain roads and inevitable snack debris. After an overnight at the Holiday Inn Express in Oakhurst (booked with an IHG free night certificate), we kicked off our Yosemite exploration with the Valley Floor Tour – a perfect introduction that provided fascinating insights into the park's history and ecology, including how indigenous fire management practices were disrupted by European settlers.
For families considering Yosemite with young children, we discovered some perfect trails: Lower Yosemite Falls offers an easy walk with spectacular views, while Bridal Veil Falls rewards visitors with cooling mist after a short hike. The more ambitious Mariposa Grove trail showcased magnificent giant sequoias but required multiple breaks to manage the heat and terrain with our little ones. One unexpected highlight? Encountering a rattlesnake – though we had hoped for bears and deer during our visit!
Accommodation was a crucial part of our experience. Rush Creek Lodge, located just minutes from the west entrance (though still a 45-minute drive to the valley floor), proved worth every penny of its $538 nightly rate. The resort offered heated pools, zip lines, game rooms, nightly s'mores, and endless activities that kept our kids entertained from sunrise to sunset. Even without televisions in the rooms, we connected as a family through board games and outdoor adventures.
Our biggest tips? Map your route carefully to minimize backtracking on winding mountain roads, prepare for motion sickness with Dramamine (administered a full hour before departure), and check multiple weather sources before packing – we brought cold-weather gear for forecasted 60-degree days but encountered 90-degree heat instead!
Looking to create your own Yosemite memories? Follow us on Instagram @TravelParty5 for photos, videos, and more insights from our adventure. And tune in next week when we continue our journey with our Lake Tahoe experiences!
In today's episode we're sharing all the details of our recent road trip through Yosemite National Park, how we used points for a portion of this trip and a full review of the Rush Creek Lodge. So listen in. Hi, I'm Raya. And I'm Dwayne, and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.
Speaker 2:We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.
Speaker 1:So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.
Speaker 2:So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip. Welcome back, hello friends. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Travel Party of Five podcast. We are somewhat freshly back from our very long road trip up through Yosemite National Park and also Lake Tahoe. It was a long drive.
Speaker 2:Lots of driving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so today we're going to talk about Yosemite and where we stayed and all that, and then next week we'll dive into Lake Tahoe, because it's just way too much for one podcast episode. So if you're wanting to hear about Lake Tahoe, I'm sorry, next week we'll talk about it Before we dive in. We are recording this on Sunday, june 22. And tomorrow, so Monday June 23, which is when this will start, when this will air first. So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, today is the day that there are some new Chase Sapphire cards coming. So it's a new Chase Sapphire business card, chase Sapphire Reserve business I think is what it's called. And then there's also kind of an updated or refreshed Chase Sapphire Reserve card that's also launching tomorrow.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of rumors about what the bonuses are going to be and what the credits will be and the annual fees. Well, the annual fees are not rumors. They're quite high at like $7.95. Yeah, but you know there's a bunch of credits to offset those fees and whatever. But you know there's a bunch of credits to offset those fees and whatever. There's also rumors, again, rumors that you can potentially get the Sapphire Reserve card even if you already have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which is different from how it stands now.
Speaker 1:So once we have clarity tomorrow, when all the official like signup bonuses and all that come out, I may do like a quick little bonus episode talking about that. So keep an eye out for that. I'll you know. Once I have all the information and it's it's fact and not rumor I likely will record like a brief podcast episode talking about it, because these cards are definitely on our radar. But, like the rumored signup bonus for the Chase Sapphire Reserve business is 200,000 points for 30k in spend over a six month period. Again, that's the rumor. Maybe this will be confirmed tomorrow, I don't know, but that is like a really high amount of spend for only 200,000 ultimate rewards, when you could get two ink cards and get very close to that for, you know, 12 to 14K in spend. So I don't know. Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:Will I be applying for any of these cards? I?
Speaker 1:am not sure yet. So again, yeah, I need to read through all the new rules and then kind of determine from there and, like I said I will, I will record like a solo bonus podcast episode about it once we have all the factual information. So anyways, okay, let's talk about our trip to Yosemite. This was like our first real national park trip as a family, and originally we were going to go to Yellowstone and we did a whole episode on how we almost booked a trip to Yellowstone, but I waited too long and reservations were already full. So then we pivot, pivoted to Yosemite instead, because it was drivable and I was able to find some reservations at a really nice place right outside the park. So, um, that's kind of how this trip came to be, and we had a great time. It was really beautiful.
Speaker 2:So beautiful, really great time.
Speaker 1:Um, but let's so. Let's talk about the drive. So, from Phoenix, we drove to Oakhurst for the first night.
Speaker 2:Which is right outside. Oh, I mean An hour.
Speaker 1:It was an hour and a half from the valley floor of Yosemite, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you booked us because we got in late and you didn't want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew that we were going to be arriving around like 7 or 8 pm and the place we were going to stay at, yosemite, was expensive and we paid cash, and so I didn't want to like waste one night there and spend so much money when we didn't have to.
Speaker 2:So we booked one of the luxurious Holiday Inn Express rooms.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean it wasn't bad, it was fine, it was completely fine. There was plenty of space you could tell it was a brand new build.
Speaker 2:Well, a recent build, yeah, because yeah it was fine, it was new.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was fine um, okay, first let's talk about the drive. So we do it well, okay, let me back up one more step. We rented a van to do this drive. We have a van, it's completely paid off and it's in great shape. However, we knew it was going to be a long trip with a lot of miles and a lot of mountains and and a lot of crumbs and chips and stuff that the kids would wouldn't care about.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, dwayne, and what should come as no surprise to anyone, if you've been listening for a while, dwayne is the one who maintains the vehicles and keeps them clean and washes them probably once every two weeks, I would say, at a minimum and really stresses about the messes that the kids make and that I make probably too. Yes, yes, okay. So we rented a van. We rented it from budget, um, part of the reason we did that was I used my American Airlines number to get like AA miles from renting this budget car. So you don't also earn budget miles, but I don't care about that, I don't. I've never earned or used a budget mile in my life. So I credited this like rental to my AA account Because, as we've mentioned several times, I'm on a quest to earn at least platinum status with American Airlines and we're we're very close.
Speaker 1:We have, I have like 17,000 miles to go and a few things that need to like hit it. I have like 17,000 miles to go and a few things that need to like hit it, um, and anyways, that's why we did that. So we rented from budget. The quality of the rental was kind of low. I would say it was a minivan. It was the same kind of minivan we have, except it was a hybrid version, and it was a newer year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it already had like 50,000 miles on it and when we got in it it was like you need an oil change. So yeah we didn't. We weren't off to a great start, but anyways it worked out fine.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that when we rented it, when we picked it up, the guy didn't even do like a walkthrough of it, he was just like here's keys right up there, yeah go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was Okay, he did not care. Um, so anyways, we did the drive. On paper, the drive was like 11 hours, I think, or 10 hours. It ended up taking us about 12 because obviously we had to make a few stops for bathrooms and gas and all that. We also took a longer stop break. For lunch. We stopped in San Bernardino in what was not the best area for like sandwiches, and the place we got the sandwiches from was actually quite good. But then we were looking for like a playground where we could eat the sandwiches and the kids could run around for a bit, and we couldn't find anything that was open and or in a good area yes, it was a little bit sketchy but shout out to the sandwich place what was it good uh green something um, yeah
Speaker 1:it was really good yes, what was it called?
Speaker 2:but anyway, we got lunch. We parked in a parking lot at a park and we ate it there, hung out there. Then we had an issue with we're about to leave. Then we had an issue with the van again, which was the car play system wasn't hooking up to any of our phones yes, which we needed? The gps yes, because we didn't want to look at our phone to yeah, and we still had like six or seven hours to go.
Speaker 1:It was called the green shack marketplace green shack marketplace. Yes, the sandwiches were very good. I would absolutely eat them again, especially the one that you got.
Speaker 2:That was my favorite, actually um anywho, we had to do like a system reset on on the radio we probably spent 45 minutes messing with this thing, which also delayed us longer. It was really frustrating and finally, we did a system reset, but we didn't do that reset like for like.
Speaker 1:I drove for a good three to four hours with the GPS just on my phone. That was the only time I drove, to give you a break.
Speaker 2:Well, I needed a break, because the night before we left we were up until almost 1 am. Yeah, and I didn't even realize it was that late, and then we got up early to drive. Normally I would have drove the whole thing, but I mean mean, there was a point where I was like I need, I need you to drive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was getting tired, yeah, and I mean I have no problem driving, um, but yeah, so we spent a long time messing with this thing and couldn't get it to work, so then I just had it on my phone for like three or four hours and then finally we ended up just fully resetting the whole thing and then it worked fine for the rest of the trip, but it was. It was really frustrating for a while, um, so that also delayed us a little bit further. I think by the time we got in it was like 7 30 PM.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we had left at like 7 30 AM. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it was a really long day. Um, the kids were really good, like.
Speaker 2:I mean they had their iPads most of the time but they, you know, I also got them some activity books and whatever else. And yeah, we had a Nintendo.
Speaker 1:Switch this time. Yeah, they were, they were great, and so we got into Oakhurst. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Yosemite Oakhurst, I think, is what it was called. Oakhurst is like around an hour and a half from the valley floor, which is like kind of the happening spot in Yosemite where most people want to be. We used an IHG free night certificate to stay there, and so those free night certificates are good for up to 40,000 points per night, and you can top them off if you need to. This room was going for 52,000 points a night, and so I had I don't know I had like 20,000 IHG points, and so I used an additional 12,000 points to cover the room, and it had plenty of space for all of us.
Speaker 1:I think there were two beds plus a pullout sofa, right, yeah yes and plus free breakfast the next morning, which was, I would say, better than a high-up place breakfast did you think so I? Mean they had like a pancake machine.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, but don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:It wasn't great, but I thought it was better than a Hyatt place.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I would just categorize those two places in the same.
Speaker 1:As like equal yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't say it was better, but I thought it had more options, like literally, they made it in a pancake machine and they weren't bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the pancakes actually weren't bad.
Speaker 1:If you doused them with butter and syrup. Well, anyway, so that's where we stayed and then, um so we drove up on a saturday, got in saturday night, we did go to this mexican restaurant that was really good, called plazuelas, I think is what it was called yes, really good yeah, plazuelas, that's what it's called mexican restaurant. Yeah, that was delicious. Actually, we had guacamole tacos pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the guacamole was really good it was.
Speaker 1:It was nice, um, and then we just went to sleep and and woke up the next day, did the breakfast thing and packed up to leave to drive again. Yeah, so we I had made a um reservation for a tour, and it's called the valley floor tour and basically you get in this little trolley. Well, let me, it's a trolley when the weather is nice and it's like a closed bus when the weather is cold or raining. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, but we had nice weather and so we were in a trolley, so like open air kind of a thing, and they drive you.
Speaker 2:I mean, this thing probably sits at least 60 people too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was good sized and they drive you around the park.
Speaker 1:You get to see, I think, four of the main sites that people like to see, like Tunnel View and Bridal Veil Falls and a couple of others. And someone is talking to you the whole time about like the history of the park and it was really interesting to learn about how both nature and like the indigenous people used fire to kind of maintain the forest. And then the europeans arrived and said all fire was bad and like stopped using fire the way that they had been and then debris would build up on the forest floor and so when a fire did come, it was burning, so big and hot yeah, that it was, you know it was burning everything down, versus previously it had been like kind of a low, slow burn fire that was getting rid of things and debris on the forest floor but not hot enough to like burn it all down, if that makes sense, and so that was super interesting to learn about, especially with all the fires and stuff that are happening, you know, around the country and in California.
Speaker 2:So anyways, I would highly recommend you do the valley tour, the valley floor tour, first.
Speaker 1:Yes, as like a good intro to the park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you haven't researched you know what I mean thoroughly what you're going to do. It definitely gives you a plan of what you should do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we really enjoyed that. For all five of us it was $167. I booked it like the week before, so not too expensive and it didn't seem to be booking up. As for time frame, when we went, we were there the second week of june, so it's definitely not in their busy busy season yet. We're still like we were there right at the beginning of their summer season, and so it was not as packed as it, I think gets, but I mean, it was still pretty busy so we were there for for contacts.
Speaker 1:we were were there on a Sunday, a Monday and a Tuesday. Sunday was the first day we got there and we had a really hard time finding parking that day because it was a weekend day. The other two days were easier. I mentioned earlier that the car or the van that we rented was a hybrid, so the place that we actually ended up finding parking all of the days was they have electric vehicle chargers, and so that's where we parked and charged the van for free yeah, for free.
Speaker 1:Every time we were in the park, so, but like that was the only place we could find a spot on Sunday, on Monday and Tuesday there was a lot more openings, but I mean, and we probably drove around for a good 20 minutes on Sunday on.
Speaker 1:Sunday before we, before one of those spots opened up. So something to keep in mind. I do think it gets busier as the summer goes on, but I also think weekends are busier than weekdays in general. Okay, so I think let's talk about all this stuff that we did in Yosemite and then we can talk about where we stayed. I feel like that'll be a good kind of way to segue or section it out. So we did the valley floor tour on Sunday.
Speaker 1:That was again our first kind of intro to the park. I do think that's a great thing to do when you first arrive, because I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but when I am trying to familiarize myself with a place that we're going to take a trip to and I'm going to use Yosemite as an example it's like people have all these names, right, for all these things and it's it's what they're called, but like I have never heard of these names before, I have no idea what any of them mean, right? So, like in Yosemite, it's like oh, you want to visit Hetch Hetchy and the Yosemite, lower Yosemite Falls and the Mist Trail.
Speaker 2:Mariposa.
Speaker 1:Mariposa Grove and what was the other one that starts like Tuolumne, meadows, right, there's all these things and it's like it's overwhelming because you've never heard of any of these places, you don't know what they are, and so if that happens to you, like it happens to me, I generally one by one Google what is Hetch Hetchy, and I look at pictures on Google and I kind of look at it is where it is on the map. And what is Mariposa Grove? And like, what is there, right, as a side note, it's the Sequoias. And so I kind of do that to get an understanding of what each thing is. And then do I want to go here? Can we go here, right? Like that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, the valley floor tour was a really good introduction to some of those things, and so I would highly recommend it if you can find availability. So we did that on our first day and then we just went to check into our hotel. We stayed at Rush Creek we'll talk all about that once we get through the Yosemite part but it was really great for families. As a spoiler alert. So then our hiked the um yosemite like lower falls trail, I think that's what it's called, right yeah I would not even describe this as a hike definitely not.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say we it was a walk yeah but a couple things.
Speaker 1:one, we're not hikers. And two again, our youngest is five, so like we have to do whatever the slowest and tiniest member of our team can do, and she's five.
Speaker 2:And it was hot.
Speaker 1:It was hot. Let's talk about the weather discrepancy before we go into it. So this is the first time this has ever happened.
Speaker 1:But I was checking the weather app for a solid two weeks on the iPhone the iPhone weather app for a solid two weeks leading up to this trip for Yosemite for Yosemite National Park and I had it like saved as a destination, you know, so when you open up the weather app you can you see your location and then any other ones. I had it saved in there and it was telling me that the highs were in the mid sixties, like 65, 66, maybe 68 was like the warmest, and the lows were in the forties, and so that's cold for us who live in Phoenix. So half of what we packed was pants and long sleeves and like multiple hoodies for everyone. Then we get there.
Speaker 2:And it's in the 90s and the lows are like 60s, it was so warm. So I mean half my carry-on, my luggage, they were yeah cold weather clothes that I didn't even touch once.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were. Yeah, cold weather clothes that I didn't didn't even touch once. Yeah, and on top of that, it's not even that like the weather was wrong, because I think some people will say, oh, that's like the weather like up in the mountains, right? No, no, no, like duane pulled up on his phone yosemite national park and had a completely different forecast than what was on my phone for Yosemite National Park. Like, side by side, we compared them completely different. His was correct as to what the actual weather was and mine was not, and so I like deleted it from my save things, I refreshed the weather app and then pulled it up again and then it matched what his said. So I don't know if it was some kind of a glitch, but I mean weeks I checked that thing and it was incorrect every time.
Speaker 2:So we had quite a few clothes that were unnecessary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dwayne did laundry. That's a spoiler alert. Dwayne's just doing laundry around the world. Okay, so that's the weather. So it ended up being pretty warm the day that we hiked the Yosemite Falls the lower Yosemite Falls again, because there's also an upper that's more strenuous. We did not do that when we did the lower hike or walk, and it was like literally 91 degrees I think that day. So it was warm. Um, you definitely need sunscreen and you definitely need bug spray. I would say there was a good amount of bugs. What did you think of the hike?
Speaker 2:Super easy hike. The views were beautiful. We actually spoiler, spoiler alert we didn't see any wildlife bears or any deers even, but we saw one rattlesnake, yes, and we saw it on this trail.
Speaker 1:We saw it on this hike at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the beginning.
Speaker 1:A guy was kind of walking past and our kids were walking a little bit off the trail and he told us, hey, there's a rattlesnake up there a little bit off the trail. And he was. He told us, hey, like there's a rattlesnake up there. He showed us photo or videos and he was, like you know, basically telling the kids like, stay on the trail. Um, and he's like we, we were kind of walking off the trail too and then we saw this guy and we were like, oh, and sure enough, he, there was a rattlesnake, like we fully saw it, with its little rattle and everything. So that was cool yeah.
Speaker 2:So again, this hike is easy for families, especially with young ones. We saw a few different views of the waterfall, which were nice. We even got, we hiked to this little like creek.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Had lunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was like a bench just facing the waterfall, and so we sat on that bench and, you know, had our packed lunch that we brought, and that was nice. I told the kids this is probably the nicest view you're ever going to see eating lunch. They had, like you know, they found their own walking sticks that they were using and they were having a great time. And after that, we, we I mean so we didn't rush getting into the park in the morning. I think we were generally in the park around 10, 10, 30 in the morning for the most part, and then we would leave around three ish.
Speaker 1:I feel like to go back and we, we packed a lunch all the days that we went in, and so then we kind of headed back to our hotel and enjoyed the hotel for the rest of the night and had dinner there, and then on tuesday we wanted to see the sequoias, and so we which is mariposa, that is, yeah, mariposa grove and so we drove, instead of going into, like, the valley floor and stopping there, we drove to Mariposa Grove. Next time, here's what I would do differently I would visit Mariposa Grove on the drive from Oakhurst into Yosemite, so like if you were going to do this trip and you were going to stay the first night in Oakhurst and then you know kind of go on from there Oakhurst, like we passed Mariposa Grove when we drove from our hotel, the Holiday Inn, to the park like the Valley Fork.
Speaker 2:It just all depends on which direction you're coming in from the park, you know, yeah, so. Take that into consideration If you're coming. I don't even know where we came in from the north or the south, I'm assuming the south.
Speaker 1:Yes, and.
Speaker 2:Mariposa's south of the park. You know what I mean. Yes, that's correct. Just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:And then where we stayed was actually closer to the west entrance of the park, like Rush Creek is close to the west entrance, but originally yes, I believe we came in from the south, so I would have done that the first day. Uh, because it was quite a drive.
Speaker 2:uh, yes, from rush creek and the roads are windy kids got sick if you didn't feel good.
Speaker 1:If you have someone that has motion sickness, it's going to be a problem. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Dramamine for sure.
Speaker 1:We, yeah, we gave Dramamine.
Speaker 2:I don't think we gave it early enough. That's what I figured out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first day we gave it right, like kind of right when we got in the car and it it wasn't it wasn't enough time for it to kick in. The days where I gave it a full hour before we even got in the car. Those were the days where everyone was fine. But I didn't figure that out until a couple of days in so yeah, the roads are windy and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, we had to we had to pull over several times because one of the kids was getting sick. I steal puke bags from airplanes, so I always have one or two in my purse, fortunately, and so I did have. You can also buy them on Amazon if you're not cheap like me, but we don't need them that often, so I feel like taking a few from an airplane is fine. Um, yeah, shout out to Southwest. Thank you, southwest, for that. Um, we also saw other families pulled over on the side of the road for the same reason, so it wasn't just us, and I think if you have motion sickness, you need to know about this.
Speaker 2:And another thing to know I think it costs what? 35 bucks to get into the park? Yes, and it's that your receipt. Your ticket is good for three days, Three days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you have a fourth grader and you get a free National Park Pass through the Every Kid Outdoor thing. But we don't currently have a fourth grader, so we paid.
Speaker 2:It has to be fourth grade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fourth grade, you get a free one.
Speaker 2:That's weird. Why is that? I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's a program.
Speaker 2:We have a fifth grader and a second.
Speaker 1:Grader. Yeah, no free parks for you. Um, okay, so yeah, the motion sickness. So I think super important for people to note. Um, I was in the front seat and I was okay, but like I could tell, like I could still feel it, if that makes sense, if I had been in the back I would have also needed Dramamine.
Speaker 2:We have ADHD and we just went off topic. We were talking about the sequoias in Mariposa. So yes, we went to Mariposa where the sequoias are. You drive there, you take a shuttle to where the sequoias are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you park and then you have to get on a bus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the bus drives not far but if you are handicapped or older, right you can drive if you have a handicap permit.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you can drive all the way up to the thing.
Speaker 2:They have a specific handicap parking lot now, this was a hike this was a hike yes it was also hot for this and it was hot and we did the easiest hike too which was grizzly giant.
Speaker 1:Is that what it's called? Yes, yeah, grizzly giant, yeah so there's a few different, like named trees, and we hiked to see Grizzly Giant, the Three Brothers or something.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then the.
Speaker 1:California Tunnel tree.
Speaker 2:Yes, this was definitely a hike. The kids were complaining halfway through. Yes, we had to stop, take a break. They had some lunchables or crustables.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Saw some squirrels, oh the squirrels were aggressive, yeah, they would come right up to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and they don't like oranges, so yeah, the kids dropped a few orange slices and they were like no, thank you. Um, it was. I mean, I thought that it was cool to see it was a drive to get there. Like I think it took us an hour and a half from rush creek to get to mariposa grove and then again an hour and a half back. Yeah, so if we had done it on the way from oakers we would have saved a good amount of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I think the total hike was what a little over hour I feel like we're there for two hours. Maybe it was like yeah is that just the hike, or is that from when?
Speaker 1:we parked? No, I think a little longer than if you include the parking time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so be prepared for that. If you have little ones, it's a hike.
Speaker 1:It was a hike. The first part was the steepest and when we were going back down we saw people like huffing and puffing going up and I wanted to be like it does get a little better. It was just hot, it was hot, it was hot. Okay, so those are the things that we did in Yosemite. We hiked the lower Yosemite Falls Trail and we hiked at Mariposa Grove. Oh, we also hiked to Bridal Veil Falls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was like you park and walk to that it is again, I would call it a walk, I would not really call it a hike.
Speaker 2:It was a steeper walk than the first to Yosemite Falls.
Speaker 1:But it was like I don't know like 0.4 miles. It was not long this parking lot is also packed.
Speaker 2:We didn't even find a spot in the parking lot, we had to park on the side of the road, yeah, like right at the entrance to the, to the parking lot. Again, beautiful views, this one, you and the two older ones yeah climbed up pretty close to the falls because, I mean, everyone else was doing it too yeah like you had to hop the wall, though, or the little little bear.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that is like kosher or not, but there was, everyone was doing it and I and the boys wanted to do it. I think if it wasn't, there would be some kind of ranger there like telling them to get down, yeah, so you can kind of like climb over this wall barrier area and you can hike up on these boulders and you can feel the mist from the waterfall. It's very refreshing.
Speaker 2:It's also very slippery, yeah, so me and the little one stayed back yes, duane and our daughter stayed down.
Speaker 1:The boys wanted to go up and so I went up with them. Um, I I grew up in the country, so so I'm just pretty comfortable walking on. I don't know, cliffs and rocks and stuff Cliffs isn't the right word.
Speaker 2:Definitely not a cliff.
Speaker 1:But I mean, we had a creek in our backyard with rocks very similar to this and I used to climb it all the time as a kid.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the city and I'm also comfortable climbing on cliffs and rocks and stuff like that. Okay, Buildings and cars.
Speaker 1:Okay, we should have a race one time and see who's better. Oh yeah, but yes, it was really. The boys wanted to go and I was like I'll totally go. And as we were climbing up, our 11-year-old looked at me and I hope I have this on the camera. He looked at me and he said I can't believe I'm doing this. I hope I have this on the camera. He looked at me and he said I can't believe I'm doing this. This is so amazing. Like he is our nature kid and he loves animals and nature and he really, really liked being in this park. I was disappointed that we didn't see more wildlife for him, because he would have loved it. But he literally looked at me and this is our kid, who is like pretty negative about a lot of things, and he was like I cannot believe I'm doing this. This is so amazing. And I almost cried because like we don't ever get that from him.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah, he mentioned that he's having a great time A couple of times, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was really a fun moment and like a reminder of kind of why we travel is to have these experiences and, you know, kind of broaden their horizons as kids. So but yes, it was very refreshing, felt good on a hot day and didn't take a lot of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a vacation or a trip. If the kids can't be ungrateful in another place, you know.
Speaker 1:So yes, oh yeah, all right so let's talk about the Rush Creek Lodge. Yes.
Speaker 2:It's where we stayed. So sorry, that was the recap of our Yosemite, yes.
Speaker 1:Well, sorry, I want to talk. I want to say really quickly wow, we've been talking a long time. Um, there were a few things that I also really wanted to do that we couldn't fit in for, mainly because of how much more driving it would have been and the kids were car sick and it just it felt selfish to make them, like suffer through another two hours to go see this. And you know, um, um, one of them was glacier point, so you can drive all the way up to glacier point and kind of look out at the views and it looks beautiful.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's very, very nice like if we were going to go back.
Speaker 1:We would definitely do that next time. Um, another one was hetch hetchy. That is like a reservoir that holds all the water for the city of San Francisco actually, and it's also supposed to be really beautiful. But again, another long drive, a hike that we were going to do but ended up not because of how hot it was was Mirror Lake. So that's another thing that I would want to do next time. And then there's also something called the Lower Mist Trail, I think, and it's my understanding is you get to hike like behind a waterfall. We did not do that because I read some conflicting views about people saying there's a part that's kind of dangerous for kids and it's really slippery, and I was just nervous about our, our younger two, and I didn't want to be super anxious on my vacation, so we didn't do that this time. I think if they were a little older I would give it a try.
Speaker 2:You mean more anxious on your vacation.
Speaker 1:Yes, correct, more anxious than my baseline of anxiety. So, yes, correct, that's lame God. Okay, so those are the things that we didn't do but I wish we had. If I think of anything else about the park, I'll be sure to interject at an inappropriate time during the rest of this episode.
Speaker 2:Yes, we know.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about Rush Creek. What did you think of it?
Speaker 2:Hotel was great.
Speaker 1:Do you remember what I said when, when you were like, we were saying outside the park, yeah, oh yeah, I said it's supposed to be really nice and duane was like it's not gonna be it's not gonna be nice but we had just come from the valley floor and like we had been inside the yosemite Valley Lodge, which is one of the lodging options inside the park and I think Dwayne was using- that as his kind of like yes, ok, this is not going to be great.
Speaker 2:What's not very nice. It was yeah, but we get there and it's quite nice.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you know what I knew it was going to be nice based on the amount that we paid for it.
Speaker 2:Like if I didn't know how much we were paying for it.
Speaker 1:Yes. So at the time of booking we paid $538 a night for for this hotel and we stayed for three nights. That included breakfast for two adults and two kids, according to the receipt, and we booked in a lodge king room. So I booked again for two adults and two kids, not two adults and three kids. They do have rooms that sleep up to six, but the price jump from rooms that sleep four to rooms that sleep six were significant, like hundreds of dollars per night more, and so I took a risk, booked us for four people in a Lodge King room.
Speaker 1:It was a tight squeeze, I'm not gonna lie. It was. There was it. We had a king bed and then there was a sofa pullout bed. The sofa bed, I would say, comfortably slept two kids and three was a stretch, and one of ours is pretty small. We had brought an air mattress that finally, on our last night there, I made Dwayne bring it into the room because I was tired of not getting a good night's sleep with one of the kids sleeping in the bed with us and kicking me all night, and so we did have an additional twin air mattress in the room and again, it was a tight squeeze. It definitely was, but it was worth it to sleep better than I had been sleeping.
Speaker 2:And I'd like to know this is probably the most we've ever paid for a hotel room besides, like Disney World when we went, probably Maybe even then, yes, disney World when we went, probably Maybe even then.
Speaker 1:Yes, the reason that I felt comfortable spending this is because I knew that we had used points for the first night and we were using points for our entire time in Lake Tahoe. So I was kind of justifying it like, okay, it's like I don't know. I think with taxes it was like $1,800. So, $1,800 for a week yes, that's how I was thinking of it, and plus, it looked so fun for kids and families that I was like I think this is, this is the place, because there are people and families that could stay like in a very minimal, like hotel and be thrilled about it. We're really not those people. Like I, I want to stay at a place that feels nice, and this place was very nice it was yeah, um, they had a pool heated.
Speaker 2:They had a playground for the kids, uh, I mean a little playground. They had a swing slide, they had a bigger slide they had zip lines, zip lines which were a big hit. They had cornhole, they had ping pong, they had this big chess board. They had a bigger slide. They had zip lines, zip lines which were a big hit. They had cornhole, they had ping pong, they had this big chess board.
Speaker 1:They had a whole game room yeah, they had a whole game room. Indoor game room, yeah, indoor, which also had a little playground in it, like inside.
Speaker 2:Yes, like a little McDonald's playhouse type thing.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Shuffle board, bumper pool, pool, pool table like video games. Video games.
Speaker 1:They weren't the best, but still there was like fun for kids, yeah or not.
Speaker 2:Ping pong um pinball that's what I was gonna say yeah, um, oh, they also had a room for, you know, guests to just go in there and like play board games.
Speaker 1:They had a bunch of like comfortable seating and tables and, yeah, it was very cozy, very cozy, very nice touch, I thought what was the first thing when you, when you walked into the, into the room, what was the first thing that you and the kids noticed? There was no tv, yeah, I was like I wonder how long it's gonna take them to notice this.
Speaker 2:Oh, within seconds oh yeah, I mean, we walked in and was like what, where the F is the TV?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was no TV. They do provide games in the room, though, for you to play, which I thought was a nice touch. You know connect as a family, and we had also brought a couple of games, so we played Clue Junior and that was pretty fun actually.
Speaker 1:The kids had a good time and so did we. So, going back really quick to the cost. So I mentioned that included breakfast for two adults and two kids. So I want to talk about how that worked, because obviously we had three kids. Essentially they just didn't charge us for the little one. I'm not sure if it's under four or under. I'm sorry, I'm not sure if it's four and under or five and under. Even one of our servers was a little bit unsure. We just told everyone she was four and so we didn't pay for her food, basically because she was.
Speaker 2:We didn't pay for her cereal every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, that's pretty much all she wanted to eat from the buffet. They did have either a buffet or menu options. I thought the menu options were much better than the buffet, taste-wise, so that's the route that I went most days, but you know the kids love a good buffet.
Speaker 2:I think it's always that way, except for, like, if you're in Kauai, which is by far the best buffet we've had. Maui I would actually say oh, and Maui too. Yes, hawaii in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's kind of how that worked. So I think you could easily do that if you have younger kids. If you have older kids, then unfortunately I don't think that, you know, booking for four and bringing five is going to work. It was a tight squeeze and so I would recommend booking. They have villas, they like it looked like. They looked wonderful.
Speaker 2:And yeah, they did.
Speaker 1:So I would. I would look into that If you're a bigger family. Just know that it is expensive, pricey, yeah. As a side note, if you want to see like any of the stuff that we're talking about today, I have a whole Instagram highlight all about it with you know, the like views from the hikes that we did a video of the room, videos of the hotel, all that sort of fun stuff. The kids were. The kids loved this hotel, though they were. I think they were outside literally morning until night every day, and that never happens here.
Speaker 2:You know it was a great hotel. Would definitely recommend it, for sure.
Speaker 1:The pool was super heated, they had a couple of hot tubs, and for dinner the dinners were fine too, like I would rank it like maybe 7 out of 10, like the food that we had there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty good. I can't remember what I got for dinner.
Speaker 1:You got like fish and chips, I think one night remember yeah.
Speaker 2:And then one night they had a buffet at the pool, which is really good actually it was.
Speaker 1:I mean, they cooked on a grill right there at the pool taco, it was so they do this like they call it a pool barbecue and they they have different menus. When we were there, it was like a taco bar. So grilled steak, grilled chicken, tortillas, guacamoleole, all the toppings, corn, you know, salsas, chips.
Speaker 2:Rice beans.
Speaker 1:Yep, and it was all you can eat, and so our kids, some of our kids, actually got two meals out of it. Basically, they ate at the beginning and they ate before they closed it up Right when it opened it up.
Speaker 2:they swam a little bit after. Then they got hungry again and ate right before it closed.
Speaker 1:Yep, and so that was. We did pay for that. You pay for the buffet. It's not included.
Speaker 2:And they give you like a wristband is how it works. And what I thought was nice is the pool bar stayed open till like 9 pm, which a lot of places close by like five or seven at the latest, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this hotel also has free nightly s'mores, so you go pick up your little s'mores kits and you roast them by the fire and you can do that every night and they just had a lot of really nice touches for families. They also had kids activities that you could do during the day if you are maybe going to take a break and not go into the park one day. We didn't do any of those because we did go into the park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can rent bikes there, paddle boards, all types of stuff.
Speaker 1:Where do you paddle?
Speaker 2:I don't know. There's somewhere close.
Speaker 1:I would think.
Speaker 2:I didn't see that part, they did have hiking trails. Hiking trails, yeah, we didn't do any of those, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went in the park every day that we stayed there.
Speaker 2:And this hotel had signs that there were wildlife have been present. The bartender told you that it was at the trash can. A black bear was at the trash can one night.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We didn't see any.
Speaker 1:Sadly, we saw none, which was disappointing. I think that's. The only thing that could have made this trip better was seeing some wildlife, I mean I don't know. We stayed three nights and then we checked out, we drove to lake tahoe. That'll be next week's episode. So, um, if you had to give, like someone one piece of advice if they were going to yosemite, what would it be?
Speaker 2:um, I mean I would try and stay in the park. Yeah, just because I mean three. I mean we stayed right outside the park, but I mean it was an hour some change to get there.
Speaker 1:Uh, well, so yeah, rush creek is literally like two minutes from the west entrance of the park but it took about 45 minutes to get to the valley floor from rush creek. So even that it's still a 45 minute drive, which is a lot. That's an hour and a half a day just back and forth.
Speaker 2:And I mean we did more driving in between hikes and all that. So I mean that would be my recommendation. I mean I don't know the accommodations in the lodges there. I'm sure they're not, you know, five-star, four-star.
Speaker 1:We saw the Curry Village tents. Oh, we'll never do that, yeah, so these are like okay, so curry village just think it's like I don't know, like canvas tents that are already all set up but they have no plumbing, so like there's no private bathroom and I don't think there's electricity either. Or if there is, it's like not a lot, um, and they're $200 a night.
Speaker 2:$200, and there's a lot of them there's a lot of them. The parking lot was super packed when we went in there, so I like if, if you're a couple with no kids are, and you know hiking is your, camping is your thing, then you know that's probably fine. Yeah, you're probably good, but I mean still, it's $200 a night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would try to look at, like maybe the Yosemite Valley Lodge. That's probably where we would try to stay for a night or two. I do think it would be really cool to be in the park when all the day tourists are gone. You know, like I'm sure, that you have a much greater chance of seeing wildlife and that sort of thing if you're there. So, yes, I do think that would be cool for maybe one or two nights to do that.
Speaker 2:What would your recommendation be?
Speaker 1:I think mine would be to just put all the spots you want to go on a Google map and map the driving distance between each of them, so that you can make sure that you're maximizing your time each day. Right? Because, again, if I had done that, we would have done Mariposa Grove the day we drove up from Oakhurst, and maybe even Glacier Point, because you pass the road to Glacier Point when you do that as well yeah, I mean on this trip alone between yosemite and tahoe, I mean we were probably in the car for probably 30 plus hours, you know oh yeah, we drove 2 000 miles in a week yeah, so yeah, um, but yeah, I think that's what I would do just put it on a map so you can kind of visually see and have a rough idea of like how to group it.
Speaker 1:And I mean I should have done that beforehand but I didn't. So learn from my mistakes.
Speaker 2:All righty Well, we appreciate you listening.
Speaker 1:Hope this was helpful. If you're planning a trip Again, find us on Instagram at TravelParty5. We have a whole highlight all about Yosemite and you can go and see all the things we just talked about. If you haven't already, make sure to give us a follow over there and DM if you have any questions.
Speaker 2:Yes, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, talk to you later. Bye.