This month I went on my last camping trip with my dad.

Dad’s still around and his health is okay, don’t worry. That said, my dad is just too old and frail to go camping any more.

White Wolf is a high elevation campground, around 8,000 feet, off Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road. The road is closed during the winter and the campground is only open for a few short summer months.

When I was growing up our family and friends would spend a week in White Wolf every summer. We swam in Tenaya, got soft serve ice cream in Tuolumne, jumped off the bridge in Yosemite Valley, fished in White Wolf creek and Yosemite creek, slept under the stars, sat next the campfire every night, went to ranger-led campfire programs, called down the aliens at night, stargazed, drank cognac warmed by the fire, and countless other activities–way too many to list. It is the place of many wonderful memories.

I was looking forward to this trip and I hoped that we would have a big group as always. But I when I got there late on Friday night it was only my dad and his friend Marshall. Walt could only stay one night and was already gone. Sadly, the others couldn’t make it.

My dad was struggling to breathe the entire weekend. The elevation is just too high for his old lungs. It was disheartening to see. My dad has always been a barrel-chested, lumberjack of a man that prided himself on his physical prowess. But now at nearly 77 years old he’s lost so much weight–all of his muscle–and he can barely cook breakfast (I had to take over).

It was a bittersweet weekend. It was nice to be in White Wolf again. I reminisced upon all my valuable memories from all the previous camping trips. It was hard to see my dad struggling so. Obviously my dad was not enjoying himself.

On Sunday morning it was time to go. I sat up in my tent and looked out the mesh window. Our campsite wasn’t our favorite, the “Rock” campsite, but we *were* just across from it. The sun was rising and the entire campground was beginning to stir. I took a long look at the Rock campsite. I knew that I would never see it again. I knew that I would never go back.

I packed my dad’s truck with all his camping gear and followed him out of the campground. He drove very, very slowly up that little road. He stopped for a moment at the big meadow. And he paused for the longest time at the final stop sign at Tioga Pass Road.

I knew that he was saying his final goodbye to White Wolf.