On a dreary Autumn night, I boarded the train to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t even planned on going to Yosemite Valley. Instead, I convinced myself I’d be flying off to the Grand Tetons by way of Jackson Hole, or alternatively, to Teddy Roosevelt National Park via Bismarck, North Dakota. As a plan C, we could always go to Memphis and hit up the Rendezvous. And that’s exactly the way I thought, until I ended up in Yosemite on “Free Park Day” two years in a row.