Back at Yosemite’s Curry Village, we found the adjacent cabin had no fewer than ten occupants. Their cabin was identical to ours which had a double bed for two, with the theoretical possibility of a roll-away creating a capacity of three. There were four children in their group who I must presume would be stashed in a closet overnight. Even so, it must have been tight quarters for the rest of them — three men, three women, one couple with apparent grandparent status. A close family.
For the rest of the evening, we sat on our veranda drinking wine, watching them drink various forms of pre-mixed hard liquor concoctions while watching us drink wine. Groups of them would come and go. The wives went to the general store, and upon their return, the husbands headed to the bar. The children, having scavenged a couple cans of pre-mixed hard liquor concoctions, dashed into the woods — which may explain why the husbands headed to the bar. Continue reading 24. Parched
During our stay there were about were thirty thousand nature lovers driving through the park each day, most generally following the rules established to preserve their lives and protect the park’s very existence, with a small few running down the wildlife, littering the roadside, and improperly disposing of lit cigarettes. Spread over the park’s twelve hundred square miles, thirty thousand works out to only twenty-five people per square mile. That is about the same population density as the State of Vermont, which does not seem particularly crowded. The reality is, though, that almost all thirty thousand visitors remain in the eight square miles of the central Yosemite Valley floor. This yields a population density of 3,750 per square mile, which is about three times more crowded than New Jersey, the most densely populated US State. 