I guess you could call it travel guilt. It kicked in big time last year, when a number of friends were planning trips to Yosemite National Park. At some point, someone asked me what my kids liked to do in Yosemite.

I started to talk about the Mist Trail then realized, though I love Yosemite, I’ve never taken my kids. We live in Northern California. Yosemite is practically our backyard. I got out the calendar and picked a weekend. It was still winter, I had months before I needed to get organized … or so I thought.

Here’s a confession that’s likely to earn me a few rude comments (if not outright death threats): I don’t like Yosemite. Or at least I didn’t, until very recently. Hot, crowded, and dusty, it always held all the charm of a refugee camp for me.

I could see that it was magnificent, I just couldn’t transcend the tour buses and carbon monoxide.

In fact only about 5% of Yosemite’s 3.2 million annual visitors ever leave the valley floor.