Travel: Wawona: The Yosemite you may not know

Less than 15 minutes after arriving in Yosemite National Park, my husband, Walter, and I had our first wildlife lesson. We were standing at the receptionist desk of the Wawona Hotel, a Victorian-era resort that presides over the park's southern edge. A college-age clerk asked us for our signatures.

"It just says that you are 'bear aware' and stuff," she said, pointing to a block of tiny text and a line at the bottom of the guest contract.

The problem was that I had no idea what she was talking about. Was I supposed to drive 5 miles per hour so I didn't take out a cub padding across the road? Attach bells to my belt to avoid being mauled? When I expressed my confusion, the receptionist puffed out her cheeks and looked at the ceiling. Clearly, she wasn't in the mood for a nitpicker.

"It means you know not to leave food or smelly items like shampoo in your car because bears can get into them," she said.

Unfortunately, our room, despite the hotel's promises, wouldn't be ready for a few hours and there wasn't a place to stash our bags. When I asked her what we should do, she gazed past me to some undetermined middle distance. It was clear she was stumped.

"You'll be fine," she said, waving us away.

I'm normally fairly laid-back when it comes to traveling, but this slacker attitude didn't sit well with me. American national parks are unapologetic about the lack of phones and TVs in many of their lodgings. But I wasn't asking for a bellhop or a pillow menu. I was simply an exhausted and recession-weary Minnesotan who had endured a seemingly endless winter. I wanted every minute and every dollar of this late May vacation to count.

Originally called Clark's Station, Wawona's roots extend as far back as 1855, when a New England miner named Galen Clark passed through the area on his way to Yosemite Valley to recover from miner's lung. Enchanted, he built a log cabin on the main trail to the valley the following year and sold provisions to travelers. When his white clapboard hotel was completed in 1879, it was heralded as "the grandest hotel in the mountains of California."

A subsequent owner's wife suggested the name of the hotel be changed to Wawona, which means "big tree" and is a reference to the valley's magnificent giant sequoia forests. When the area became part of Yosemite National Park in 1932, the park's lodging operators took over management of the National Historic Landmark.

Vintage charm

Today, the hotel trades on its time-capsule vibe. Pianist and singer Tom Bopp has indulged visitors with ragtime tunes since 1983. And even though the crowds sport polar-fleece chic, the lobby is gussied up with Victorian antiques and brocade wallpaper.

That doesn't mean the Wawona is fancy. In fact, the place exudes a dilapidated charm. The floors of the second floor veranda sag under threadbare indoor-outdoor carpet and most rooms are just big enough for a double bed and bureau.

They played cards and listened to their iPods and watched from their Adirondack chairs as the setting sun cast long shadows across a meadow tinted purple by wild lupines.

Which is to say that it was so delightful that my initial irritation went away the moment those bags finally left our trunk.

A peaceful valley

Unlike Yosemite Valley, whose granite panoramas and sky-high waterfalls draw so many tourists that it can feel a little like the Universal Studios of the natural world, the Wawona Valley is surprisingly peaceful.

On our first day, Walter and I walked 6 miles through dense groves of giant sequoias and ponderosa pines without seeing a single person. (Thankfully, no bears, either.) An 8-mile hike to and from Chilualna Falls was just slightly more crowded.

Many are charred by fires, with black gashes streaking up their adobe red bark. Their resilience struck me as incredibly poetic. Who of nature's creatures, after all, hasn't been somehow burned? And yet, life goes on.

As we strolled through the grove, the trees started to take on different personalities. There were the sugar pines, whose pineapple-sized cones dangled like grand dames' earrings. Nearby, lanky mountain hemlocks posed in their lacy tutus. The Grizzly Giant -- a famous sequoia that's 7 feet in diameter and estimated to be 1,800 years old -- has so many carbuncles and wrinkles that it reminded me of a retired boxer. I was completely under its spell until I spotted a lodgepole pine that reminded me of a professor. I imagined him scolding me: "Lady, we're trees," he said. "Enough with the anthropomorphizing."

A storied existence

It was so dreamy we didn't want to leave. But dinner called, so we returned to the Wawona's dining room, which is staffed with its own share of old-timers who love to talk about the traditions of the room, including the enchanting lampshades that hang from strings of sequoia cones. Originally produced by a school for deaf students in San Francisco, the deerskin shades showcased hand-painted scenes of different famous giant sequoias, including the now fallen Wawona Tunnel Tree and the Clothespin Tree. Paper reproductions replaced the originals in 1984.

Wawona is filled with those types of stories. My favorite is of a more recent vintage. Seventeen years ago an employee named Marvin was cleaning the pool when he spontaneously started whistling "The Star Spangled Banner." He made such an impression that it's now part of the resort's flag-raising ceremony -- the serenade begins each morning "sometime between 8 and 9" -- and his performance is piped through a walkie-talkie into the hotel's lobby.