Sick in Yosemite

We got up Saturday morning all excited for a great day in Yosemite.  We got out early so we could catch the early morning sun in the park.  The first part of the drive really twisted up the mountain, and some of the kids complained of car sickness, especially Taylor.  We figured once we got into Yosemite Valley and out hiking things would be better.  Traveling through the tunnel from the south into the Yosemite Valley is an amazing site.

 

It was still a little early in the morning for a good family picture.

The Shifletts seemed to have it more together this morning.

 

Our first stop was Bridalveil Fall.  We soon realized how busy a park like Yosemite could be on a Saturday afternoon, and realized we should have started at 3:30 instead of 6:30.  We finally found parking spaces, waited 20 minutes to use the restroom, and hike up to the falls.  Taylor wasn't too happy and wanted to sleep in the car, but we forced her on anyway.  We were hoping the mountain air would help her with some car sickness.  The kids loved collecting all of the sticks on the ground and using them as their magic wands, scepters, and a myriad of other things.

The waterfall was pretty amazing.

After the first short hike, Taylor was really not doing well.  Will went with Kyle and Noah to continue exploring, and we took the girls to the medical shack so that they could check Taylor out.  After waiting a couple of hours, the doctor decided to follow Cyd's diagnosis and say that Taylor was probably constipated, and just needed to get out and walk some more.

We drove down to the parking area and had some lunch since the Shifletts had already eaten.  All through lunch, Taylor just kept complaining about how she was feeling.  She just laid on this rock and refused to eat or drink anything.

After forcing a little food into Taylor, we headed to wait in line to get on the shuttle bus and go out exploring.  While waiting in line, Taylor threw up what must have been everything she had eaten in the last 48 hours.  We found a nice volunteer at the park to help us clean up the mess, packed up, got Will, and headed back to the condo to let Taylor relax and get feeling better.

I took Will swimming since he had to miss out on Yosemite, and we just took the evening slowly.  By the end of the day, Taylor seemed to be doing much better, and we were looking forward to a relaxing Sunday.  But ever since swimming, Will was complaining about his ears.  And we had just found out that Kyle was on antibiotics for strep throat, so we shouldn't have been so casual just yet.
 
Will started complaining about his ears hurting through the night, so by this morning we knew he wasn't going to just get better.  After much debate, I decided to take him to the urgent care center in Oakhurst.  Only when I finally got there I found out it was more of a mini emergency room than an urgent care center.  They estimated our charges if they saw Will to be between $1,600 - $2,400.  Now I like Will, and wanted him to feel better, but I figured a $10 bottle of Motrin was the better route to go.  So we got some Motrin and decided to keep him drugged up for the day, and we would visit a true urgent care center in Fresno on our way to Sequoia.

Will and I decided to take the "scenic" route back to the condo, based on some road on the van's GPS.  However, it turned out to be much more scenic than we had expected, and after an hour and a half on roads with no cell phone coverage, we finally got back to the condo and Cydnee and the girls who were starting to wonder what had happened to us.  We spent the rest of the day playing games and relaxing.

The Shifletts had also left us to head home this morning.  It was a lot of fun traveling with them, and we had wished they could have taken off more than a week to travel around with us.  We look forward to traveling with them again.