4 Extraordinary Days in Yosemite National Park

Last Updated on November 30, 2024 by Bonnie

Yosemite National Park is one of the seminal places in the United States… everyone should see it once in their lives. It truly is that iconic and words do not do it justice.

Yosemite was the first land set aside for a park. Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant in 1864 to protect Yosemite Valley and the famed naturalist John Muir lobbied President Roosevelt to create a much larger national park. The park now spans 1,168 square miles and encompasses five major vegetation zones.

This was my first visit to Yosemite National Park and I spent most of the trip looking up in awe, especially in Yosemite Valley. But I didn’t see it all and now I have to go back. More on that later. First, let’s talk about where you need to go on your visit.

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Getting into Yosemite National Park

Let’s start by entering the park. To get to the valley from the west, you have three choices: El Portal Road from Mariposa, Big Oak Flat Road from Manteca, and Wawona Road from Oak Hurst. If you are coming from the east, there is only one choice: Tioga Road from Lee Vining.

Your choice of road can have a major impact on your visit to the park. We stayed in Mariposa at the Yosemite West/Mariposa KOA, which was not quite an hour’s drive from the park entrance on El Portal Road.

El Portal Road is a very pretty drive coming in on the Merced Canyon but is also a bottleneck. We delayed entering the park a couple of hours on a Saturday and the line to get in was about an hour long.

Pro Tip: If coming in on El Portal Road, plan to enter the park no later than 8 a.m. to avoid excessive lines.

Note: Yosemite NP required timed-entry passes for anyone not camping inside the park for 2020-2022. Reservations were not required in 2023 but will be required again in 2024. Specifically, you will need reservations on weekends in February and from mid-April to late-October. This changes year to year, so, be sure to check the park’s official website for up-to-date information on Yosemite’s entrance reservation system.

The other entrances on the west side have shorter lines to get in but are about an hour by car from Yosemite Valley. To compare, it is only about 20 minutes to Yosemite Valley from the El Portal entrance.

The other major thing you need to bear in mind is road closures. Most years, Tioga Pass is open by mid-May. When we visited, in early June 2017, it was still closed due to heavy snow. This meant the entire eastern two-thirds of the park was closed off from vehicular access. In fact, that year Tioga Pass did not open until June 29.

Additionally, El Portal Road was closed following a 4,000-ton rock slide just as we were getting ready to leave the area. We are grateful it did not happen while we were stuck in traffic in that exact spot two days earlier. 

Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley is the heart of the park. It is also where the vast majority of visitors spend their time and for good reason. It is breathtaking. There is so much to see and do. If you can only spend a day or two in Yosemite, that is where you should go.

As you come into the valley from El Portal Road, the first waterfall you will see on the left is the Cascades, which is quite pretty and, anywhere else, would be a showstopper. In Yosemite National Park, it is the waterfall equivalent of a cocktail weenie. It’s tasty, but the main event is still to come.

The first major stop on the road is Bridalveil Fall. The parking lot is on Wawona Road, just after the turnoff from Southside Drive (the entrance road). This iconic waterfall is worth getting out and seeing up close. As a bonus, the walk-up provides great views of El Capitan, one of the iconic rock faces of the valley, and Horsetail Fall.

At this point, you have a choice: take the Wawona Road to either Glacier Point or Wawona or proceed into the valley. Let’s assume you keep on going into the valley. My recommendation: Go to either Yosemite Village or Half Dome Village and park. Once parked, do not move your car until you are ready to leave the valley. Yosemite Valley can quickly become overcrowded and getting around can become a major hassle. Fortunately, the park provides a free shuttle.

We parked at Yosemite Village for our first couple of days and spent time hiking in the valley. We hiked the Valley Loop Trail. If you do nothing else, be sure to hike up to Mirror Lake. It was gorgeous.

Read Bonnie’s article on the Valley Loop Trail here.

There are plenty of great hikes in the valley which are much shorter or you can do just a portion of the Valley Loop Trail. I highly recommend getting out in the meadow near Sentinel Bridge. There is a nice trail there with plenty of amazing views of the valley and Yosemite Falls in particular.

Yosemite Village

Yosemite Village has a good visitor center, as well as several other services. The theatre at the visitor center provides great educational videos.

Located near the visitor center is the Ansel Adams Gallery. The gallery offers photo walks, where a gallery photographer will take up to 15 people on a walk through the meadow pointing out great photo locations. Be sure to check their website for tickets.

There are also two lodges in Yosemite Valley: the Ahwahnee and the Yosemite Valley Lodge. The Ahwahnee is the iconic hotel in Yosemite National Park and is a classic example of “parkitecture.” This hotel is quite expensive, but you can visit the lodge even if you are not staying there. Both lodges are not too far from Yosemite Village.

Curry Village

Curry Village is more centrally located to the campgrounds and has great views of Half Dome.

The Curry Village Pizza Patio & Bar makes a great pie and serves some cold beer as well. The large pizza was plenty for the two of us for two nights.

In terms of lodging, aside from the campgrounds, there is also the cabins of Curry Village. You can find both traditional cabins and tent cabins. Located about halfway between the two villages is the Housekeeping Camp, which offers a tent camping experience but provides the tent… and not much more.

Glacier Point

If you choose to take Wawona Road to Glacier Point Road, your first stop (after Bridalveil Fall) is Tunnel View. This is THE iconic view of Yosemite Valley. Yes, you should stop and take a picture. Yes, it is worth the crowds to do so.

Glacier Point Road splits off from the Wawona Road and ascends. The road winds a bit but affords some great views of the Clark Range along the way, particularly at Washburn Point.

Continue to Glacier Point and spend some time admiring the amazing views of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley and Vernal Fall.

If you are looking to get away from the crowds, be sure to head down Four Mile Trail, which will take you all the way to the valley floor. If you aren’t up to the entire hike (especially the hike back up), follow it down just 10-15 minutes where you will find even more staggering views including Yosemite Falls. The hike back up from this point isn’t too bad.

On the way back down Glacier Point Road, we stopped at the Sentinel Dome Trail and hiked up to the top of Sentinel Dome. The hike is not hard, but it does take you to the top of a granite dome more than 8,000 feet in elevation. We took it slow and steady and had no problems getting to the top, even with the snow.

Depending on how much hiking and stopping you do, a trip to Glacier Point takes about an hour.

Wawona

The drive down to Wawona Valley is scenic and it takes about an hour to come down from Glacier Point.

At Wawona, you will find a campground, a gas station and store, a small visitor center and a lodge. You will also find the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, which has restored buildings along with blacksmithing demonstrations.

The Wawona Hotel, another iconic lodge, is shuttered beginning in December 2024 to assess the condition of the building. The Park Service recently replaced the roof and discovered significant damage to the building. The lodge is closed indefinitely while the building is assessed and repaired.

We decided to take a hike around the Wawona Meadow, which was a great 3.5-mile hike along an old fire road circling the meadow. It was quite relaxing.

I would love to be able to tell you all about our visit to the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees at this point. I really would. Alas, the grove was shut down for restoration during our visit.

Tuolumne Grove

Tuolumne Grove is one of three groves of giant sequoia in Yosemite National Park. The hike down from the parking lot is a bit steep but is reasonably easy. We hiked down and back in 70 minutes.

The trees are staggering. The immensity of the trees really must be seen to be understood.

Tioga Road

I would love to tell you all about our adventures heading up the Tioga Road, or better yet, pulling our camper over Tioga Pass. Sadly, it was closed due to heavy snow when we went and did not open until about two weeks later.

Read more about what to do in Lee Vining and the area on the east side of the park here.

Hetch Hetchy

Hetch Hetchy is a day-use area of the park located on the north end of the west side of the park.

You can get to Hetch Hetchy by driving out of the park on the Big Oak Flat Road and picking up the Evergreen Road to the Hetch Hetchy Road.

The drive through the Poopenaut Valley has great views of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and O’Shaughnessy Dam. Congress authorized the City of San Francisco to dam the Tuolumne River and turn Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was likened to Yosemite Valley in beauty, into a reservoir.

Granted, the dam provides water and clean electricity to San Francisco, but at significant cost and controversy.

Parking near the dam is limited and the rangers keep track of all of the folks coming in and out of the day-use area. You can’t stay overnight without a permit, which is mainly for backcountry hikers.

It takes a couple of hours to drive to and see Hetch Hetchy, but it is certainly worth it.

Planning Your Visit

The biggest piece of advice I can give you on planning your visit to Yosemite National Park is to do your homework well ahead of time and pay attention to park notices. Unlike many other popular national parks, Yosemite is not far from several major metro areas, leading to significant crowding in the park.

While we believed in the overcrowding, experiencing it was a pretty big source of frustration.

Pro tip: Don’t plan on being in the park on a summer weekend if you can help it.

When we go back, we want to find a way to stay in the park. We missed out on so much because we had to drive an hour back to our campground. Staying in the park, however, requires planning and a bit of sacrifice in terms of hook-ups for the camper.

Our other big tip is to pay attention to road closings. On this trip, we headed out as early as we could to make sure we saw the waterfalls, which dry up later in the summer. Boy, we saw the waterfalls! They were roaring due to the snowmelt. The tradeoff is we could not see the eastern two-thirds of the park.

In the future, we plan on returning later in the summer, or maybe in the fall, to see what we missed.

Our Planned Seven-Day Itinerary

We stayed in Midpines, a small town on the outskirts of Mariposa.

• Day 1: We got up early and drove into Yosemite Village in Yosemite Valley. We spent the day hiking the valley. We were in the valley until after dark.
• Day 2: We got up early and drove into Yosemite Valley for the Ansel Adams Gallery Camera Walk. It took about two hours all told. We then spent the rest of the day recovering from our hike the day before. I suggest spending the time to see anything you missed in the valley on Day 1.
• Day 3: We drove the Glacier Point and Wawona roads. We left the campground fairly early and spent the day seeing and hiking those two areas and drove back to our campground through Oak Hurst. We would have also gone to the Mariposa Grove near the southern entrance, had it been open.
• Day 4: We drove Crane Flat, hiked Tuolumne Grove and drove out to Hetch Hetchy. We ended up coming back into the Yosemite Valley for Bridalveil Fall and sunset views.
• Day 5 (missed): We would have spent Day 5 driving the western part of the Tioga Road.

• Day 6 (missed): We would have taken the camper over Tioga Pass and over to Lee Vining.
• Day 7 (missed): Tuolumne Meadows and anything else on the eastern side of the Park.

As you can tell, the snow-covered Tioga Pass threw a wrench into our plans, but, hey, it gives us a good reason to go back.

Final Thoughts on Visiting Yosemite National Park

There is a good reason why visiting Yosemite National Park is a bucket list item. It is simply breathtaking. Seeing Yosemite Valley, in particular from the Tunnel View, is every bit as striking as the Grand Canyon or Crater Lake.

Aside from the views, there are great hikes and tons of backcountry to explore. You can easily spend weeks exploring and hiking this park.

We loved Yosemite National Park, but it certainly requires a lot more planning than many of the other national parks. If you are planning a trip, you need to start a year out at a minimum. Reservations are difficult to come by and dealing with the timed entry system takes patience.

If you go during the height of the summer, you WILL experience significant crowds. While the crowds are not fun, the views are so worth it!

And, if you need help planning your trip, check out our book, USA RV Adventures. We include two routes that that you through Yosemite National Park and the surrounding area: Summer in the Sierra and The Grand Loop: National Parks of the West.

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