When I was a kid I wore work boots, a pony tail and overalls nearly every day.
I collected pocket knives, held a sling shot in my back pocket and had a toy bow and arrow.
My afternoons were spent catching lizards and frogs, poking horned toads with sticks and chasing down my pet chicken, Scruffy.
I built forts, dug holes and got dirty.
I even touched bugs.
It’s safe to say I was a bit of a tomboy,
a tomboy who loved the outdoors.
Flashforward about 20 years…
Things have changed.
While I still have an appreciation and love for the outdoors,
I’m not quite as brave when it comes to immersing myself in it.
Which is why I was both excited and hesitant about my vacation to Yosemite.
Turns out, you don’t have to enjoy rolling around in the dirt or catching bugs to enjoy Yosemite.
It’s beauty and grandeur are enough to create the trip of a lifetime.
We’re talking, the take your breath away kind of beauty–and of course, good times with the family.
Last week, our little trio along with my Momma, Grandma and Auntie headed out on our first trip to this infamous site.
We stayed in the Sierras one night on the way up, to check out the giant trees.
And we totally roughed it in one of these tiny cabins. Lil W, Ben and I all shared a double bed–it was a cuddle fest.
I think my favorite was our family bike ride exploring the valley.
Between the two of us, my Momma and I snapped over 1,000 pictures.
We stayed at the historical Ahwahnee hotel, which has become my new favorite hotel {more on that in a future post}.
My super hip Grandma sporting a Just.Lovely.Things headband.
No joke, we had a bear who climbed the apple tree at our hotel every morning, just steps from where we were enjoying breakfast. And deer walked right past us on our bike ride.
Did I already mention this trip took my breath away?
And there was NO cell phone reception and limited Internet–so I completely took a deep breath and shut off for the week, much needed. Oh yeah, and we also experienced a brief torrential down pour and power outage–exciting stuff!
I can’t wait to go back when Lil W is a bit older.
I may just need to grab myself a pair of cute hiking boots for the occasion.
Or perhaps dust off the overalls. Yes, I saved them…just in case, ya know.
Favorite vacation spots–whats yours?
44 Comments
Salena Lee @ A Little Piece of Me
September 13, 2011 at 7:31 amAshley, you are so cute! Thanks for sharing your family vacation, such beautiful photos. I live in Hawaii. My husband and I went to Alaska for our honeymoon and we fell in love with the place. We are longing to go back but haven’t been able to. I also love the outer islands here. I live on Oahu but I want to visit Kauai and Lanai.
Lea S.
September 13, 2011 at 7:47 amAwesome trip!! And your family is adorable!
Lisa
September 13, 2011 at 7:57 amHee hee, “self-phone reception”. I mean this in the best way possible: that is adorable!
I love how our mind plays tricks on us sometimes 🙂
Your trip looks amazing and I wish I could go, too! I’ve been to a couple of National Parks in the US in ’05, and I’ve loved them 🙂
Jamie
September 13, 2011 at 10:59 amLooks like fun… and I’m not an ‘outdoorsy girl’ at all!
Glad you had a wonderful vacation!
lauren
September 13, 2011 at 11:02 amI want to go there so bad! You guys are such a beautiful family and I am glad you got to getaway to have a good time! i noticed you are calling the Little Guy, ‘Lil W’ now…makes me kind of sad since mine is 5 days younger! They aren’t “babies” anymore 🙁 (but they’ll always be OUR babies). Have a good week!
caitlyn
September 13, 2011 at 11:52 amwe took a family vaca to williamsburg, virginia. i lurved it! i love the colonial times and it was so neat to revisit that era. we went to a park where they dressed and worked as they would have during that time. however, i am a fan of electricity so i enjoy my timeframe very much. but some of that homemade apple butter was almost enough to make me wish i was born at a different time…almost 🙂
alicia @ la famille
September 13, 2011 at 12:13 pmhow fun!! i’m not super outdoorsy either, but that looks like a blast!
Gina
September 13, 2011 at 1:25 pmYosemite is amazing!!! Looks like you had a great time. Love the apple eating bear!
Maria-Isabel @Agape Love Designs
September 13, 2011 at 1:46 pmwow, so glad you had a nice vacation! It looks amazing! How crazy and cool at the same time about the bear being so close everyday! Where I live we get dear and all kinds of animals walking around our front yard everyday..;. even a mountain lion once-which was scary. lol But its always fun to be so close to nature. So awesome! I was so like you as a kid. A total tomboy! I was just telling a friend that the other day, and how having kids.. my daughter mostly, has made me more girly. More “high maintenance” lol Im not so one with nature anymore… but I do enjoy its beauty still. 🙂 What a great post!
Brooke Anderson
September 13, 2011 at 1:51 pmYou look adorable in every picture! Hmmm…my favorite vacations? Disneyland! I love everything about Disneyland. I like leaving my cell phone in the room, and just grabbing my camera. I’ve been so many times my new favorite thing to do is just sit on a bench and people watch and snap lovely pictures. Oh, now I want to go.
Julie
September 13, 2011 at 2:26 pmWhat a great trip! I love Yosemite and have such great childhood memories of vacations there. I love that you saw a bear and some dear! How fun!
CAW
September 13, 2011 at 2:37 pma-mazing!! i cant wait to hear your future post about the hotel.
our vacay spot is Edisto Island in SC.
quiet.beach.family.serenity.peace.
ps. love the pic of your gma and now i totally need errr.want RED Toms…
lori
September 13, 2011 at 2:39 pmi love these pictures. you have the cutest little family.. and you are naturally so gorgeous!! this post made me want to visit yosemite… and i am not (by any stretch of the imagination) an outdoorsy girl. 🙂
ilene
September 13, 2011 at 3:36 pmyou and your family are absolutely so cute – and what a fun vacation! i love the picture of you jumping. too cute. 🙂
Ellen
September 13, 2011 at 4:14 pmAw I love yosemite! This makes me want to go back again with my little uns! I love the red toms by the way!
Meli
September 13, 2011 at 4:23 pmOkay….g-ma is sooooo down with the fashion trends!!!! I can dig it. Yeah. Wow….wow wow!!!!! So amazing. You jumping on that tree stump…amazing. I am just ALMOST speechless. Instead I’ll just fumble words around…..
Krysten
September 13, 2011 at 4:49 pmWhat a fun trip, looks like a great family vacation!
Courtney Cover
September 13, 2011 at 4:55 pmI have not been to Yosemite, but it does look gorgeous. Another fun place for you to try would be CardinalVillageResort.com. It is in the High Sierras up from Bishop. I have gone there since I was 5, which makes it about 23 years now.:)
There is only internet and cell reception near the store/cafe. No tv’s in the cabins. There is a stream and pond onsite and ENDLESS room for little ones to roam, collect rocks, stomp in water, fish and take hikes and explore.
The cabins are RUSTIC but have all the essentials with cute mountain charm. Once upon a time these were mining cabins for the Gold MIners. There is also a gold mine you can hike too on the property!
Glad you had a great vacation!
Stefanie
September 13, 2011 at 5:01 pmWhat a wonderful trip! I love the pictures!
Angela
September 13, 2011 at 5:10 pmI love these photos. They are gorgeous! Yosemite is on my list and I will definitely go there someday! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
~ Angela
grahamandangela.blogspot.com
Jamie Banks
September 13, 2011 at 5:25 pmOh My. I live only a hour and a half away from Yosemite. I have only been there once. My family and I enjoyed every moment being there. I hear its so pretty in the winter when its snowing. If you can get in with all the roads being closed for winter. I am so happy to hear you enjoyed it. The best is riding your bikes and looking up and see just how SMALL you really are in the world.
This is my first time to comment on any of your post but look forword to reading everyone. Thanks for making my cup of coffee in the morrning so wonderful.
Momma Banks
Mindy Harris
September 13, 2011 at 7:37 pmu r so cute and tiny and i’m so glad you got to go to yosemite and now i want to go and i’ve never seen a cuter family. oh.my.word.
Whitney
September 13, 2011 at 7:44 pmMy favorite vacation spot is Colorado! We went almost every summer when I was growing up, and we’ve been once with my family since my husband and I got married. We’ve been to lots of different areas, but one of my favorites is Estes Park. We hope to go again next year, and and this time we’ll have our baby with us! She’ll be around 18 months if we get to go. Your trip looks like lots of fun!
Libby
September 13, 2011 at 8:24 pmYosemite is my FAVORITE vacation spot!! I just did a post about our 2011 trip a few weeks ago! Yosemite is the most gorgeous, peaceful, relaxing place I’ve ever been and it means so much to my fiance and I. I don’t think we’ll be able to go next year though since we’re getting married and I am soo bummed 🙁 I cant believe you saw a bear! We saw one up in a tree but after 30 mins of watching he never came down. And we saw hundreds of deer..okay, maybe like 50, but still, TONS! And I wish we could stay at the Awahanee but it’s far too expensive for us. We stay at the ever so glamorous (NOT) Housekeeping Camp.
my post about Yosemite:
http://libbylibbylibbyonthelabel.blogspot.com/search/label/Yosemite
Ashley @ DesignBuildLove.co
September 13, 2011 at 10:20 pmbeautiful place! We’ve been dying to go and neither of us have ever been! My friend is even a park ranger there! Our regular spot is definitely Monterey! We have a couple of different places we stay there, but we LOVE to road bicycle and there are just amazing views there!!!
Erin
September 14, 2011 at 12:40 amYosemite is on my list of places to go. My favorite vacation spot is Alexandria Bay, NY. It’s on the St. Lawrence River in the 1000 Islands region. Google search Boldt Castle on Heart Island. Such a beautiful and sad story.
Anna @ The Guiltless Life
September 14, 2011 at 12:45 amI’ve never been to Yosemite; it looks stunning. Just last weekend I went on a road trip into the Okanagan where there were deer in our garden at breakfast and yes, that is something that takes your breath away. We get quite distant from nature when we live in cities, even beautiful cities like Vancouver and Southern California. Thanks for sharing!
Michelina
September 14, 2011 at 2:05 amThese pics are beautiful!! My favorite vacay is a total tourist attraction!! Disneyworld!! <3 First vacation with the now hubs, where we got engaged and then we visited Disneyland for our honeymoon!! So magical!! Other than that N. Carolina is a fav I can return to again and again!! 🙂
WWW: What We Wore to Dinner in Yosemite - Little Miss Momma
September 14, 2011 at 4:49 am[…] of places, which was part of the charm and contributed to the completely relaxed feel of our vacation. However, one night we reserved a spot at the “fancy-schmancy” restaurant at the […]
Angie
September 14, 2011 at 10:43 amWOW- What a vacation!!! You captured some gorgeous shots. Nature at it’s finest 🙂
Jen J
September 14, 2011 at 1:11 pmWe want to go to Yosemite sometime. It looks beautiful there. Thanks for sharing some of your pics! On a side note, are your red shoes TOMS? They are really cute.
Erica @ Acire Adventures
September 14, 2011 at 1:20 pmThat looks amazing! You can never go wrong with national parks, they are always so beautiful. 🙂 We stayed in a tent for 3 days this year at Waterton National Park (Canada). It was really beautiful there and it’s so fun getting little boys outside.
Melissa
September 14, 2011 at 1:40 pmGreat pics! My husband and I went to Yosemite last month with our 9 month old son and it was a fantastic trip.
jackie
September 14, 2011 at 2:33 pmholy moly those trees are huge! glad you had such a good time 🙂 my favorite vacation is a family camp on Findley Lake in New York that my fam goes to every July. the same people always go, so it’s this big group of life long friends plus fun on the lake plus chapel services. perfect vaca 🙂
Aleyta
September 14, 2011 at 9:24 pm1. Your G-ma is TO DIE for with her sweet headband. Omg, I love her!
2. You are SO pretty my darling, even roughing it in the woods!!!
3. Now I want to go to Yosemite with my family and my mom! Great pics!!!
brittany @lovestitched
September 15, 2011 at 1:02 amoh I have ALWAYS wanted to go there! It looks like you guys had a great time! I LOVE that your gma was wearing that cute headband!~ 🙂
I thought you look TINY before but next to those GIANT trees you really look tiny tiny!
Aneta Kudasik
September 15, 2011 at 7:19 pmOMG! Your pictures took my breath away! What a beautiful place. Isn’t our planet lovely!? I think I would faint if I saw a bear though. I’m deathly scared of them.
Aneta
Maya
September 15, 2011 at 7:28 pmI love your blog but have never posted a comment until this post. Yosemite is my absolute favorite place on earth (at least that I have been to). We camp there at least twice a year and I was so excited to take my daughter there for the first time last October when she was 5 months old. Every time we drive in to the valley it takes my breath away on how beautiful it is.
Lemon drops at the Ahwahnee is always a must for our group! So glad you enjoyed it as well.
Erna
September 16, 2011 at 2:37 pmWhat a wonderful holiday!
Living in Asia has opened my doors to many favorite spots, but I think my all time fav is Khao Sok in Thailand. It’s a national park with a massive lake that was created when they dammed this river. I always stay in a tiny floating hut on the lake. The hut has four woven walls, a nice mattress, a mosquito net and some pillows. A chair if you’re lucky! Waking up to gibbon monkeys yelling at each other, then rolling out off the mattress into the lake at sunrise is just pure magic.
Nicki
September 16, 2011 at 4:02 pmAshley… our family goes to Yosemite every May. We must sit near each other at the next dinner club so we can talk all things Yosemite!
Renee
September 17, 2011 at 1:58 pmWow, what a beautiful place. Looks like such a great trip. I want to go there some day.
It the picture of you at the top are those cabins in the background?
Katharine
September 18, 2011 at 2:06 amEven though I grew up in Southern California, I’ve never been to Yosemite. I’ve been to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to a few lakes and froze my toes off while camping. My mom had me wear cute thin little girl socks and we had indoor slumber bags. Now she and I know how to camp better but she prefers her Airstream to sleeping in a tent (at 81 I think she’s entitled). Thanks for sharing the photos. Katharine
P.S. We are practically neighbors.
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March 22, 2016 at 7:03 pmAshley, you are so cute!