Getting away from it all, or maybe not

©2015 Lydia Hinshaw

No room at the power strip

 YOSEMITE NP, CA -- First let me say that we did not stay at the Tuolumne Lodge, where couples pay $150 per night to sleep in platform tents with wood stoves and no electricity.

 We stayed a couple of miles down the road at the Tuolumne Meadows Campground, where we paid $13 per night to sleep in our van, which also has no electricity.

 But it's possible to have breakfast at the lodge dining room, even if you aren't staying there.  This is always fun, because you're seated at a table for eight with strangers, always adventurous folks with interesting stories to tell.

 One lady Tuesday morning was starting out on a 27-day backpacking trip on the John Muir Trail.  A family of four also seated at our table included a Swiss husband, his Swedish wife and their two children who spoke fluent German and Swedish but no English.  Dad had hiked Half Dome the day before.  After breakfast, they were departing for the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.

 Wednesday morning we dined with a couple whose ages were 95 and 83.  They don't hike anymore, they explained, they just walk, and they stick to flat ground.  How young they made us feel!

 The other four at our table were a group of men ranging from 40-something to nearly 70, who get together each year to backpack for several days to Yosemite's Sierra High Camps.  They were having quite a good time already, laughing over stories of past trips.

 During our two meals, no one checked a cell phone screen even once.  And later I found out why.  On a shelf by the door were a collection of cell phones, each tethered to one of the power strips provided by the lodge.

 Although the cell coverage is poor-to-missing in Yosemite's High Country, the fear of a dead battery remains strong.