Yosemite Valley's Curry Village Made Me Want to Vomit

In the Fall of 1995, upon completion of graduate school and a sadly unchallenging final exam, my roommate and I locked our dingy Virginia apartment and took off on a cross-country road trip to explore the richness of America's many national parks and growing number of microbreweries.

Among our stops was Yosemite, and while my memories of our time in the valley are kind of fuzzy, I do recall a few things. People drove up and down the valley along a paved one-way loop. There was simple (but, we’d find out, fully reserved) campground. There were no convenience stores, no Starbucks, not even a vending machine. Just endless natural beauty, and an open invitation to enjoy it without distraction.

It was what I imagined a National Park should be. Except for the lack of bears but we’d manage.

I returned to Yosemite this past September and found a much different place.

The one-way loop through the valley was still there, but it had grown a bunch of two-way appendages that lolled off toward some of the more popular trail heads and photogenic sights. And while private vehicles were still allowed everywhere, there was now a gaggle of free-to-ride buses circling the valley like plates of sushi on a conveyor belt.

The upside to the bus system was obvious. The downside was the sprawling parking lot they put right in the middle of the valley. Yes, to ease congestion and air pollution the brain trust in charge decided not to have visitors park at the edge of the valley and bus them quietly in and around, but instead turn two acres of this wonderful wilderness into a rumbling, gaseous cesspool of cars, RVs and tour buses.

I’m sorry, was the Yosemite Valley Planning & Development Committee sponsored by a microbrewery?

And this was only the beginning.

About a week prior I’d tried to reserve a site in one of the campgrounds there in the valley. (Yes, there was now more than one.) Normally I wouldn’t bother. Whether it’s camping sites or road trips or graduate school, I tend to just wing it. But I had a wife and two very small boys with me, and winging it doesn’t work when there are dirty diapers involved. 

Though the summer season had officially ended, spaces still went fast. Or so went someone’s warning. Really, winging it is so much easier than making a phone call. But making a phone call is easier than dealing with an irritated wife.

“There’s nothing available within the valley on those dates,” said the pleasantly robotic woman on the other end of the line. “You might want to try Crane Flats.”

Crane Flats had some open sites, which was good. It was also ten miles west of the valley. I was mildly disappointed – until a week later when I saw what had happened to the Yosemite of 1995.

Camping, Without All the Dirt

Curry Village, the monstrosity that had taken up residence there in the valley, seemed an apropos name considering the obscene amounts of food now available out there in the wilderness (more on that in a minute). That name, however, refers to David and Jenny Curry, who first opened up a tent camp in Yosemite in 1899.

They’d toss their cookies – and their curry – if they saw what had become of their $2/night operation.

The 2010 version of Curry Village offers motel rooms, cabins with private baths, and, for those looking to really rough it, tent cabins with “custom insulating panels” (to quote the now-defunct website). And the spirit of the outdoors doesn’t stop there. This “unique and magnificent place” as they describe it is also now blessed with “plenty of dining options near all of our Yosemite cabins.”

The Sierra Nevada Committee still (perhaps grudgingly) allows people to camp, but campfires are now prohibited. For one, all that smoke interferes with the valley’s natural ability to process two acres’ worth of car exhaust. And two, the conglomerate running Curry Village can’t have people out there cooking and eating their own food when they’ve gone through the effort of providing plenty of dining options. Cuts into profits.

The only dining option I needed when we got to Yosemite was a little hot water to mix up some milk for my five-month-old son. For better or for worse I didn't have to look too far.

The Plague of Civilization

New buildings had sprung up all over Yosemite like massive warts, with log cabin exteriors to make you feel rugged and plasma TV interiors to make you feel comfy as you sit on your ass breathing recirculated air watching video clips of all the beauty that is right f***ing outside!

The atrocity I ran into in my search for hot water was a restaurant/café/pizza palace of cavernous proportions, infested with people standing around chatting and sipping from large paper cups with heavy plastic lids while others waited on a long line for their coffee or cappuccino or espresso.

I cut the line, tossed out a hurried plea for some hot water for my baby girl (yeah, I know) and got the hell out of there.

Back outside, waiting to cross the street, things were no better. Standing on a glazed footpath so clean I felt like I should take off my sneakers, I turned to a man and a woman who were walking toward me, oversized cups of coffee in their hands, a loud conversation unrelated to Yosemite oozing out of their mouths.

The man looked upward, absently then suddenly interested in something that he seemed surprised to see. He pointed at it with his chin. “Hey, is that Half-Dome?”

Yes, I wanted to say. That is Half-Dome. The single most recognizable landmark in the valley, featured on every piece of official Yosemite literature out there, you goddam idiot, how’s your coffee?

The woman gazed up and around. “Yes…I think so…”

Five-month was fed. Three-year was bubbling with energy. Skies were bluer than in my dreams. It was past high time to head out into this miracle called Yosemite.

I held my breath and my nose and drove into that two-acre plot of hell so we could ditch our van.

On the winding shuttle bus ride through the trees and all along the mile-and-a-half hike in the sun up to Vernal Falls I was so entranced with what I was seeing – and merely what I might see – I would have forgotten I had my kids with me if one of them wasn’t constantly on my lap or in my arms.

Up at the viewpoint I crouched down and shared with my older son everything I knew about waterfalls which, for better or for worse, was perfectly age-appropriate for a three-year-old.

The sound of the falls whispered and whistled through the air, competing with the relentless sounds of the inane chatter of the people around us.

On the walk back down the path there was no waterfall to help drown out the noise. “It’s so steep.” “This is exHAUSting.” “I can’t wait to get back.” “Who do you think will win American Idol?” (I'm serious, this was what was on someone’s mind at that very moment.)

I held my three-year-old by the hand as the shuttle bus pulled up. We were at the front of the line, eager to plop down for a bit after hauling our kids along that hilly three-mile hike. There seemed enough seats for all of us and at least some of the people on line behind us.

The doors opened, and three drunk women speaking slurred Russian pushed past my wife and the baby in her arms, tripped onto the bus and fell into the closest empty seats.

At the next stop a group of no less than fifteen high schoolers piled on, carrying on with each other, oblivious to the world around them like any group of high schoolers would be, in any environment. A couple of them carried cardboard pizza boxes. Others fooled with their iPods. None of them looked outside until one of them shouted to the rest that their stop was coming up.

They all peered out the windows like they’d never seen the place before.

Teenagers don’t have to be dedicated naturalists. But if my kid ever goes on a field trip to a place like Yosemite he’s leaving the iPod at home. On the off-chance he even has one.

Meanwhile I’ll be bringing bail money because the next time I see someone push past my wife or any other woman with a child in her arms so they can throw their selfish asses in the closest empty seats I’m going to punch them in the throat.

Driving out to Crane Flats that evening, miles from Yosemite Valley, was caught sight of a bear running across the desolate road and disappearing back into the woods.

Leaving Yosemite to Get Away From It All

The Crane Flats Campground was perfect. People built campfires among the trees and sat on logs and simple folding chairs. We carried flashlights to fetch water and go use the bathroom. There were no stores, no vending machines, no cabins with insulated panels, and no dining options save for what food people brought with them – and stored in heavy metal boxes to keep the bears from ripping open their car windows and camper doors because the bears in the area can and will do just that.

Like I said, the place was perfect.

In the morning the drive back to the Valley rekindled my belief in the survival of Yosemite's beauty. The sun was hovering over the immense peaks and rock walls carved by glaciers many eons ago. A hundred thousand pine trees stood like guardians to an ancient and magical place.

Down in Curry Village people busied themselves with coffee and leisurely café breakfasts and the morning paper. The newspaper! Yes, there are newspaper boxes so the anyone who came out here to get away from it all could keep up on the news, then maybe go look around a bit of the park, if there was time before the doors to the Lunch Glutton restaurant at the Cozy Cabin opened up.

Work in Wonderful Yosemite Valley! (No Knowledge of Yosemite Required. Ever.)

In the afternoon my wife wanted to go pick up a few postcards, for my older son to send to his teachers and grandparents back home. She’s like that, always making nice gestures and creating good learning experience for the kids. Unlike her husband, who is usually busy making sarcastic comments and inadvertently teaching the kids bad words.

She went outside and sat with the kids at a picnic table, helping our older one write out a few simple sentences on each card. I stayed inside the bowling alley-sized souvenir shop, next to a rack of genuine Yosemite shot glasses and coffee mugs (Made in China), to keep an eye on the digital camera I was secretly and probably illegally recharging through an outlet in the wall behind my feet. As I waited, reading my National Park Service pamphlet on Yosemite (which I’d already read three times), people wandered past and in lazy looping circles, spending their time in this natural paradise looking for crap to buy.

It was killing me, trapped inside among the revolving hordes. They shuffled, glaze-eyed, looking at sweatshirts and stupid wall ornaments and a thousand other ways to show other people that they were here and, as a bonus, remind themselves what it was called.

To validate my petulant disgust and I decided to play a little game.

I picked up a postcard with a panoramic scene of the famed valley entrance, probably the single most photographed view of Yosemite. Then I looked for a gift shop employee so I could ask them the name of the waterfall in the picture.

This was not a trick question. It wasn’t just some water tumbling down some rocks. It wasn't a barely-visible thin white hint of a waterfall hidden among an expanse of trees. It was right there in full view, in all its cascading glory, across the valley from El Capitan. For anyone who had spent more than a couple hours in this place, there could be no mistaking which waterfall that was.

Or could there?

“Excuse me,” I said, sticking my postcard in the face of a man with a bushy white moustache and a name tag pinned to his green staff t-shirt. “Larry. Could you tell me the name of this waterfall?”

He stared, eyes vacant, until he finally came out with what was clearly the first name to pop into his head. “Oh, that’s Yosemite Falls.” At least he knew where he was. “Or maybe Nevada Falls.”

Never mind.

I thanked him and let him go.

Two teenage kids were over in Aisle Eleven, stocking shelves of canned food. This made no sense to me considering that No Campfires Allowed thing. “Yay! Cold Pork ‘n Beans again!”

“Hey guys,” I said as I walked over. “Can I ask a quick question?”

With all the confidence of someone who knows stocking shelves is a crappy job and doesn’t care, the first kid answered Yosemite Falls. His buddy took a quick look and corrected him.

“Nope, that’s Bridalveil Fall.”

I thanked him and left him to chide his can-stacking pal. “Figures you wouldn’t know, dude, you’re from Boston…”

The next green t-shirt, worn by a young girl who gave an impression she'd never seen let alone touched dirt, also guessed Yosemite Falls.

Three out of four people living and working in Yosemite had now answered incorrectly. My stupid game was playing out even better than I expected.

The next girl, twenty-something with a sharply-defined nose, shot me an impatient ‘Bridalveil’ as if I were the most stupidest person on the planet for asking. The next guy knew too, evening the score at three and partially restoring my faith in humanity.

The last test was the floor manager, a girl with a figure like an upside-down light bulb and a look of panic in her eyes as she hurried back and forth between a service counter and the door to a back room. 

It was obvious she didn’t need some ass from New Jersey asking her stupid questions. She wasn’t getting away from me though.

“Excuse me,” I said, cornering her next to a display of god-awful picture frames. “Can I ask you something real quick?”

She saved the day with a correct answer, given curtly and quietly while looking desperately over my shoulder at something, maybe Larry.

What Cabins and Coffee Have Wrought

The board out on the front patio of the pizza place advertised a Happy Hour special in neon lettering. The main lodge offered a humongous all-you-can-eat buffet for fifteen bucks which, for my wife, who had spent the last ten days breast-feeding our kid in the back of our rented conversion van, constituted a much-needed and well-deserved change. As a guy, I have never been turned off by all-you-can-anything. So in we went.

The food was about as expected. The atmosphere was surreal. Nowhere in the entire valley were people’s eyes so full of excitement and wonder as in that modern, ‘murican Valhalla. Kids and adults loaded their plates to overflowing, practically drooling as they hurried back to their tables, oblivious to the clumps of macaroni and chunks of turkey falling off their plates along their way across the carpeting.

Creature comforts of a dozen kinds and no campfires allowed. Gourmet coffee and plenty of dining options. TVs and couches, and newspapers at your fingertips. People who have no idea what they are looking at selling you souvenirs of it. Teenagers toting pizzas and adults walking around drunk.

Welcome to the logical conclusion of the development of Curry Village.

With any luck those planning committee people will be too busy with the freebies from their sponsors to figure out that there’s a place called Crane Flats.



Crane Flats Campground. For those who want to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Yosemite Valley.