Evergreen Lodge, Groveland

My husband and I just returned from a three day stay at the Evergreen Lodge. First off, the parking was horrible. We ended up parking in the street in front of the lodge the first night because of the meager parking space. The road is not paved, and the parking area is not clearly delineated. Some cars used up too much space (improperly parked), leaving us with not much of a choice. I do like the gravel roadway because it adds to the ambience of the place, but a better parking system would have been great. The restaurant food is just passably okay. We had dinner there for three nights, and each time I could hardly eat the food. We had one breakfast at the restaurant. For the milk and orange juice, we each got a dinky little glass that was about the equivalent of a shot glass. When my husband commented to the waitress that the glass is so small, she replied that, "It's probably because we let it hatch too early," and left. Pretty obscure and not even funny. She also forgot the toast (well, I did, too, until after the meal). There was no way I was going to have another breakfast in that place. Unfortunately, for dinners we didn't have much of a choice because the area is pretty isolated. The room is nice-sized. However, there were no hairdryers (a fact I didn't know about, so I ended up drying my hair by the fireplace). The bathrooms had bare floors; we had to use one of the towels to step on after showering. There are also no phones in the cabins. If you run out of towels like we did (they didn't make up the room and replace the towels like we asked), you have to walk all the way back up to the front desk. When it's raining and cold like it was when we were there, that isn't too much fun. Also, in this case, don't plan on having a heart attack or fall in the shower (which was pretty slippery and had no handles) while you're in your cabin because there is no way to communicate with the outside world (and that includes the front desk). The wifi also didn't work too well in the recreation center (which is the only place you can get wifi at). I guess the whole point about being on vacation and therefore not being connected makes sense, but it would be great to have that as an option rather than an imposition. Which brings me to the staff. There were some who were really helpful, but some of them were downright cranky. You can almost see little balloon thoughts coming from them thinking: "Another batch of whiny tourists.... Great." To be fair, a few of them were cheerful and warm. But I don't much care about the surly ones. And the coup de grace: we were quoted one price when we booked our reservation, and a different price was charged when we were checking out. I tried to point this out to the unhappy young man at the desk, but he was either too obtuse to understand (the original price was charged right on the bill to hold our reservation), or I was just too unpersuasive to make sense. My husband decided it wasn't worth the half hour we had to stay longer at the place to sort this out. Would I recommend this place to my friends and family? Doubt it. I like the place, but it's a little too rough around the edges, and not in a nice way. The way I described it to my husband: It's like a bunch of kids decided to open a lodge and see what happens. There's quite a bit of disorganization there, especially in the restaurant. We definitely got the impression that the whole place was run by amateurs. We were ready to make the most of the vacation, but these little annoyances kept poking their heads in. It was the first time I've been to Yosemite, and I'd love to go back for another visit. But I won't be staying at this lodge again.