Yosemite: A Visitor's Guide

Yosemite National Park

When people think of Yosemite, they're usually thinking of (and they usually end up visiting) Yosemite Valley, a seven-mile-long collection of natural wonders crammed into a surprisingly compact area in the sort of eye-candy-everywhere style you'd expect if Las Vegas got to do geology. To mention just the most famous sights here, there's the iconic Half Dome; El Capitan, the world's largest granite monolith and a must-visit for rock climbers; Yosemite Falls, 2,425 feet high; Bridalveil Fall, 620 feet high; the waterfalls of the Mist Trail; and the Tunnel View, from which you can see several of the preceding in a single huge, breathtaking vista.

There's more than that to Yosemite, though. After you subtract Yosemite Valley, you're still got 1,163 square miles of national park left over: about the size of Rhode Island, bigger than all the Hawaiian islands but one, bigger than the entire nation of Luxembourg. The scenery doesn't pile up at quite so provocative a rate as in Yosemite Valley, but there's still much that's worth seeing. Here's the best of the rest of Yosemite:

The Mariposa Grove, in southern Yosemite, is the largest and most famous of Yosemite's three giant sequoia groves. It's home to around 500 of these enormous trees, including the Grizzly Giant; the California Tunnel Tree, which you can walk through; and the no-longer-upright Wawona Tunnel Tree, which your grandparents may have been lucky enough to drive through before it fell over in  the late 1960's. The Grizzly Giant is 34 feet in diameter at the base (about as thick as a house, in other words) and estimated to be 2,700 years old.

Glacier Point Road is a 16-mile road that runs parallel to Yosemite Valley's southern rim. Southbound trails here head into Yosemite's backcountry, while northbound trails lead to several spectacular overviews of Yosemite Valley and beyond. The short trails to Taft Point, Sentinel Dome, and Glacier Point itself are especially popular.

Tioga Road is Yosemite's highest road, peaking at just under 10,000 feet elevation at Tioga Pass, Yosemite's lone eastern entrance. The Tuolumne Meadows area is the mostly widely visited, but the road also includes access to several scenic alpine lakes; impressive vistas from Olmsted Point, Mt. Hoffman, and Clouds Rest; and a giant sequoia grove (the Tuolumne).

Getting To Yosemite

Yosemite is located in east-central California, about 180 miles east of San Francisco, where you'll find the closest major airport. By car, it's roughly 280 miles north of Los Angeles, 400 miles north of San Diego, either 350 or 450 miles northwest of Las Vegas (depending on time of year and which roads are open), and 150 miles south of Sacramento.

There are smaller airports closer to Yosemite at Modesto (90 miles from the park), Merced (70 miles), and Fresno (60 miles).

There are no air, rail, or ship services directly into Yosemite, and consequently most visitors end up climbing into a car and driving themselves the final miles into the park. If an unfortunate misunderstanding with local law enforcement has left you without the benefit of a driver's license, there are still ways to get into and around Yosemite, though they require some study and an ability to meet bus schedules.

Amtrak provides train service into Merced (70 miles west of Yosemite Valley). Once you've arrived in Merced, you can buy a YARTS ticket for a bus ride into the park. Peak-season tickets cost $25 one way and include park admission fees; see the YARTS website for schedules and more details.

Another alternative is to take a tour bus. At virtually any time of year, you can spot large private buses escorting scores of Asian and European tourists past Yosemite's major highlights (except  Glacier Point; full-sized private buses aren't allowed on the road). There are also companies providing guided Yosemite tours (generally in mini-buses) to visitors starting from as far away as San Francisco. If you don't mind letting somebody else determine what you'll see, as well as when and for how long, these are a reasonable alternative.

Getting Around Yosemite Without a Car of Your Own

Once you're in the park, you can see most of the paved portions of Yosemite via buses operated by the park service. A series of free shuttle buses cover the east end of Yosemite Valley, including the commercial centers (Yosemite and Curry Villages), Yosemite Falls, and the Mist Trail trailhead. Another, which you can catch at Yosemite Village, covers the west end of the valley, including El Capitan and the 4-Mile Trail trailhead. (Here's a valley shuttle map in PDF format.)

There are also free buses to transport you between Yosemite Valley and the Tuolumne Meadows area, including points of interest in between such as Tenaya Lake and Olmsted Point; and between Yosemite Valley and the Wawona Hotel in southern Yosemite. From the Wawona, there are free buses running regularly between the hotel and the Mariposa Grove, seven miles away. Note that the Wawona bus schedule assumes you're staying in Wawona - it goes from Wawona to Yosemite Valley in the morning and in the other direction in the afternoon.

There are no free buses to the Glacier Point area. If you don't want to hike (or you only want to hike one way), you'll have to buy a ticket for one of the Glacier Point buses leaving from the Yosemite Lodge in Yosemite Valley. For adults, tickets are $20 one-way and $32.50 round trip. Though officially the bus doesn't stop at any place along Glacier Point Road except its final destination at Glacier Point, the bus driver will probably be willing to drop you off at one of the other trailheads if you give him or her advance warning.

So far as I know, the park offers no buses at all to the Hetch Hetchy area. You'll need a car or stout hiking boots to get there. There are also no free buses to points on Tioga Road east of Tuolumne Meadows, which would include Dana Meadows and the Mono Pass and Gaylor Lakes trailheads.

In any case, see the National Park Service website for up-to-date schedules, costs, and exceptions (not all buses run year round, for instance).

If you're a strong bicyclist, you can go anywhere in Yosemite that cars go. It's roughly 30 miles from Yosemite Valley to the Mariposa Grove at the southern end of the park; just under 50 miles from Yosemite Valley to Tuolumne Meadows, which is near the eastern entrance at Tioga Pass; and a little over 25 miles from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point.

It's risky, though. Shoulders range from narrow to non-existent on most Yosemite roads, and the drivers tend to be distracted by the scenery. The park's only bike paths are in Yosemite Valley, and bike travel on other roads, though legal, carries an element of peril with it. With the aforementioned bike paths, though, bicycles are in my opinion the absolute best way to get around in Yosemite Valley itself. You can rent them at Curry Village if you forgot to throw one into your suitcase. Bikes are prohibited on any surface that's not either paved or marked as a bike path.

If you're a backpacker, you can go to all the destinations the buses reach, and lots that they don't, often via shorter routes and almost always via highly scenic ones. It's a 25-mile drive from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point, for instance, but via the Four-Mile Trail, it's a hike of - well, a little over four miles.

Admission Costs

Admission to Yosemite isn't free, except in a few special cases, but you do have several options. Most visitors, as I've determined by watching the exchange of cash from the drivers ahead of me in line over the years, choose the $20 option, which gets one carload of people into the park and is good for one week (hold onto your receipt so you don't get charged again on the way out). For $40 you can get a Yosemite pass, which allows you and however many people you can fit into your car admission to Yosemite for the next year. For $80 you can purchase an "America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreations Lands" pass (your best bargain on a per-syllable basis), which gets you and your car free admission for the next year into not just Yosemite, but all U.S. national parks and a variety of other federal recreational areas you've never heard of.

You can get reduced rates if you're not in a car ($10 per person), if you're an American citizen 62 or older ($10 for a lifetime pass), an American citizen with permanent disabilities (free), or a backpacker (free if you're entering by a trail, since there aren't entrance gates posted on them).

Things to Do in Yosemite

There are lots more things to do in Yosemite than whatever it is you think people do there. Some of them require that you spend money on equipment or someone to keep you from dying, but there's plenty that's free, starting with the 800 miles of hiking trails. (Of course there's arguably no better investment than paying someone to keep you from dying - ask any good doctor, FDA inspector, or wiseguy.)

Hiking

Hiking is probably the primary activity in Yosemite, whether it's the short treks to Lower Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Fall, or Glacier Point, or the life-threatening ordeal to ascend the cables at Half Dome. There are more than 800 miles of trails in Yosemite.

Selected Noteworthy Day Hikes Starting in Yosemite Valley

The 4-Mile Trail
Bridalveil Fall
Half Dome
The Mist Trail
Lower Yosemite Falls
Upper Yosemite Falls

More Yosemite Valley Hikes

Memorable Day Hikes Along Glacier Point Road

Dewey Point
Glacier Point
The Panorama Trail
Sentinel Dome
Taft Point

More Glacier Point Road Hikes

Impressive Day Hikes Along the Tioga Road

Cathedral Lakes
Gaylor Lakes
Glen Aulin
May Lake & Mt. Hoffman
Mono Pass
North Dome
Tenaya Lake
Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoias
Tuolumne Meadows

More Tioga Road Hikes

And Elsewhere:

Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias (southern Yosemite)
Merced Grove of Giant Sequoias (Big Oak Flat region)
Wapama Falls (Hetch Hetchy area)

More Yosemite Hikes

Bicycling

In Yosemite you're limited to road biking only; no mountain biking is allowed. You can't take bicycles on any trails except a select few that are explicitly signed as bike-friendly (the Wawona Meadow loop in southern Yosemite, for instance).

Although bicycles are allowed on all the roads in Yosemite, most of them have little to no shoulder, which makes bike riding risky. Bike lanes exist only in the eastern half of Yosemite Valley.

This may lead you to believe that bringing your bicycle to Yosemite would be a waste of time. (And that's before taking into consideration that you can rent bikes at Curry Village in Yosemite Valley.) However, riding a bike around Yosemite Valley, where there are bike paths in the east end and generally acceptable shoulders on the west end, is about as pleasant a way of passing an afternoon as can be devised, particularly if you're a fan of leisurely, flat rides, and you don't mind stopping when wildlife gets in the way. I think it's the best way to see Yosemite Valley.

If mountain biking is your sole passion, then Yosemite is dead to you, but you can still find trails nearby. The 007 single track near Bass Lake is justly popular (bonus tip: your skin will thank you for not colliding with any of the mesquite trees that line the trail), and the Jackson Road sequoia loop, which starts at Fish Camp and leads past several isolated giant sequoias and the Nelder Grove on a combination of single track and fire roads, is also memorable. The Mammoth Mountain ski area, about 40 miles southeast of Yosemite, rechristens itself the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park and turns its ski runs over to mountain bikers in the summer; you can take the gondola up and then help yourself to a hundred miles or so of single track.

Rock Climbing

Yosemite, with its profusion of sheer granite slopes, is crack cocaine for rock climbers. El Capitan is one of the world's most famous rock-climbing destinations (and on any given day you can see crowds in El Capitan Meadow watching climbers make the ascent), but you can find climbers just about anywhere in Yosemite. If you're interested in learning and you don't share my fear genes, you can find several guides in the area willing to show you the ropes, harnesses, and carabiners, all while making sure you survive to dine out on the experience later (details).

Rafting

Though you can't beat seeing Yosemite Valley by bicycle, it's hard to argue with a lazy summer rafting trip through the heart of Yosemite Valley via the Merced River. You can rent rafts, which hold 4 - 6 adults, at Curry Village. Rentals cost $26 per adult and $16 per child under 12 (more details here), and include a shuttle ride back to Curry Village after the three-mile float.

Once it leaves Yosemite Valley, the Merced becomes considerably more lively, a fact not lost upon whitewater enthusiasts. If you prefer your rafting adrenaline-fueled, you can find local tour companies to guide you through the class 3-4 rapids in the Merced River canyon, just downstream from the park. The river runs usually end well before the summer does due to lack of water volume. The canyon is pretty, but don't expect an isolated ride through the wilderness - the river shares the narrow canyon with Highway 140.

Golf

A golf course isn't something you generally expect to find in a national park, especially a jewel like Yosemite where the management is eternally trying to convey a spirit of wilderness conservation. Nonetheless, a nine-hole, par-35 course occupies Wawona Meadow, just across the road from the Wawona Hotel in southern Yosemite. Fees are $18.50 for nine holes and $29.50 for eighteen; cart rentals cost $15 for nine holes and $24.50 for eighteen. (More details here)

Ice Skating, Skiing, Snowboarding and Snowshoeing

The Curry Village skating rink, with its views of Half Dome, is one of the world's most scenic. Badger Pass, along the Glacier Point Road, is a small mountain (800 feet of vertical) that lacks challenging runs, but is widely regarded as a good place to learn to downhill ski or snowboard. Cross-country skiers and showshoers are presumably able to explore any snow-covered area, but the last 10 miles of Glacier Point Road (after Badger Pass) are the most popular destination; the road is closed to automobile traffic and the park service maintains Nordic ski grooves on the road. Many travelers here veer off to Dewey Point instead of going all the way to Glacier Point. The park hosts popular Nordic ski races on the Glacier Point Road in February.

Fishing

Trout fishing with lures (no bait and no barbed hooks) is legal in Yosemite with a valid California fishing license. Rainbow and brown trout are the prizes you're most likely to find flopping on the bank at the end of your line. Catch-and-release is the rule in some areas. Here's more information on seasons, rules, etc. 

Sunset Watching

An impressive amount of standing around and staring at stuff goes on in Yosemite. Once you visit you'll see why almost immediately. It's certainly a valid activity, and my purpose in this paragraph is not to discredit it in any way, but to point out that there may be better things than standing around and staring. What I have in mind here, to delay no longer, is sitting around and staring.

Its advantages over standing around and staring are obvious, so I won't belabor the matter, but will instead point out that sunset is one of the great opportunities for reclining and gazing, and Yosemite has outstanding sunsets if you know where to look for them. The great sunset views in Yosemite, possibly contrary to your expectations, tend to be to the east, with the sun at your back turning Yosemite's vast expanses of Sierra granite from gray to shades of orange. The two most easily accessible spots for seeing spectacular sunsets in Yosemite are Glacier Point and Sentinel Dome, which both have commanding views for miles to the east. It's a mile hike back to the trailhead from Sentinel Dome, so be sure to bring a flashlight and pay attention to the layout of the trail on your way up.

If any hiking at all is too much, the patio at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley might work for you. The sunset views are more limited, but you can sit at a table overlooking the south lawn and get bar service, which certainly has its advantages. At one time there was a hotel at Glacier Point with a deck facing the fabulous views there, combining perhaps the best of all possible worlds. It was too good for this world, though; the hotel burned down in 1969.

Tuolumne Meadows is another place that combines easy-to-get-to with respectable sunset performances. It doesn't have commanding looking-down-on-the-world views, and the pointiest peaks are to the south and west, which works out better for sunrises than sunsets. The views of the meadow and the Tuolumne River are good sunset material, though, along with a few other surprises, and the sunset light plays nicely off Lembert Dome.

If you're willing to work for your views, the tops of Half Dome, Clouds Rest, and Mt. Hoffman are also places to find sunsets you'll remember for the rest of your life, especially if you don't survive the scramble back down the mountain in the dark.

Where to Stay

Hotels in Yosemite

There are two and a half conventional hotels in Yosemite Valley and one more a few miles inside the park's southern entrance on Highway 41. Like most of the lodging in Yosemite, they typically get booked months ahead for the summer season.

The Ahwahnee Hotel, in Yosemite Valley, was designed (successfully, by general acclaim) to be a showpiece for the national parks, a grand lodge in the spare-no-expense tradition of, say, the Peterhof but with less gold and more scenery and Native American designs. It's priced like you'd expect from a functional work of art, with rooms starting around $400 per night.

Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, which is accurately named - it's just across Northside Drive from the Lower Yosemite Falls trailhead in Yosemite Valley - is less luxurious than the Ahwahnee, but more reasonably priced, with rates running from $100 - $200 per night.

Curry Village is in the southeast end of Yosemite Valley, near the Mist Trail and Half Dome trailheads. It's made up primarily of cabins and exotic tent/cabin hybrids (known, logically enough, as tent cabins), but has a handful of traditional hotel rooms as well.

The Wawona Hotel, in southern Yosemite, was built in the 1870's and is a National Historic Landmark. You have better odds of getting a room with a veranda than one with a bathroom (since nearly all have verandas but about half require you to walk down the hall to find a bathroom), but that's the only major hardship caused by its venerable design. There's a restaurant in the main building and the hotel is across the road from Wawona Meadow and the golf course that occupies a section of it. It's seven miles from the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, and free shuttle buses run there (and back) throughout the day during the summer.

Cabins, Tent Cabins, and the Curious Housekeeping Camp

In Yosemite Valley, there are 180 cabins at Curry Village and 24 more at the Ahwahnee Hotel. Not all the cabins at Curry Village have private bathrooms; if that's important to you, be sure to check this when making your reservation. At the White Wolf Lodge, along Tioga Road, are four cabins with baths.

Otherwise, there aren't any cabins available from official park outlets, but there are, surprisingly, a few pockets of private land in Yosemite, and many of the homes here are available for vacation rentals. The Redwoods agency manages more than a hundred of them in the Wawona area in southern Yosemite. Another agency handles several more in Foresta, a small enclave a few miles outside Yosemite Valley off the road to the Big Oak Flat entrance (Highway 120). There are also private rentals available in Yosemite West, near the western end of the Glacier Point Road.

Though Curry Village has cabins and hotel rooms, it has more tent cabins - 427 of them - than anything else. Tent cabins have wooden floors and frames to go with canvas walls and ceilings, and come equipped with cots, blankets, and pillows. Tent cabins at Curry Village also each have an electric light, though this isn't the case elsewhere. It probably goes without saying, but tent cabins don't have private baths.

Even though their names conjure up visions of vast fireplaces and overstuffed chairs, the White Wolf Lodge and the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge are both comprised primarily of tent cabins. The White Wolf, on the western half of the Tioga Road, has 24 tent cabins to go with its four highly-sought wooden ones, and the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, near the eastern end of Tuolumne Meadows, has 69 tent cabins. Both lodges also have restaurants housed in larger tent cabins.

Tent cabins may sound unusual, but they've got nothing on the Housekeeping Camp, in the southeast end of Yosemite Valley near Curry Village. The dwellings here are an intriguing mashup of a tent and somebody's garage. Each one has a concrete floor, three concrete walls, one cloth (curtained) wall, and a canvas ceiling. These are attached to covered outdoor patios with picnic tables. The sleeping areas (i.e., the mostly-concrete-enclosed rooms) have electrical outlets and light, but no plumbing.

Camping

Yosemite has thirteen drive-to campgrounds, about half requiring reservations. If you're a backpacker with a wilderness permit, there are additional campgrounds open to you, not to mention an almost countless number of beautiful places to spread out a sleeping bag. If you're looking for a campground you can drive to, the official campground details and reservations pages are likely to interest you. Prices for campsites range from $10 - $20  per night, with one exception charging $5 per person per night.

Camping either outside an official campground or in a hike-in campground that's in a wilderness area (the Little Yosemite Valley campground, for instance), requires a wilderness permit. These permits are free if you get them in person the day of or the day before your trip, or $5 if you reserve them in advance. If you want to leave from one of the more popular trailheads, such as the Mist Trail, the $5 is probably worth it. You can get the latest official information on wilderness permits, including reservations and lists of trailhead quotas, from the NPS.

Campgrounds in Yosemite Valley

The Upper, Lower, and North Pines campgrounds are clustered in the eastern end of Yosemite Valley near Curry Village. They all require reservations and usually get fully booked months ahead for summer stays. Campsites cost $20/night.

Campground 4, along Northside Drive near the Upper Yosemite Falls trailhead, has 35 campsites available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Openings usually fill early in the morning during the summer. Camp 4 is a walk-in campground, meaning that you have to leave your car in a parking lot and carry your camping gear to your site; motor homes and trailers are not allowed. Camp 4, not far from the base of El Capitan, is particularly popular among the rock-climbing community. Sites here cost $5 per person per night.

Campgrounds Outside Yosemite Valley

The park maintains two campgrounds south of Yosemite Valley. The Wawona Campground, near the Wawona Hotel, has 93 sites, all bookable by reservation, that cost $20 per night. Bridalveil Creek Campground, the only lodging along Glacier Point Road, is first-come, first-serve and charges $14 per night.

There are two more campgrounds in the Big Oak Flat area (the park's northwest entrance via Highway 120). Hodgdon Meadow is just inside the 120 entrance, and Crane Flat Campground is at Crane Flat, where the Tioga Road begins. Both accept reservations and cost $20 per night,

Finally, there are five campgrounds along Tioga Road. From west to east, they're Tamarack Flat, White Wolf (which also has cabins and tent cabins), Yosemite Creek, Porcupine Creek, and Tuolumne Meadows. Half the sites at Tuolumne Meadows accept reservations, but the rest of the sites at all campgrounds are first-come, first-serve.

High Sierra Camps

The High Sierra Camp concept was invented in 1916 by park director Stephen Mather, a man who was clearly tired of hauling a sleeping bag around everywhere he went. The High Sierra Camps are an inspired idea: the chance to see backpacker-remote destinations without all the backpacker's heavy lifting. Instead of carrying a tent, sleeping bag, and various cookware on your back, you can carry a light pack into a High Sierra Camp, where you get to sleep on a cot in a tent cabin, get dinner and breakfast cooked for you, and (for an extra fee) get a sack lunch to carry away with you on the next day's hike. There are five High Sierra Camps in Yosemite, all within a day's hike of either a trailhead or another camp.

The camps, understandably but unfortunately, are extremely popular - so popular that spots for the following season are chosen by lottery in February. (You can get more lottery details here.) If you didn't get your requested camp reservation, check back in April and throughout the summer - there are sometimes a few unclaimed openings for dates and camps that no one requested in the lottery, and if your schedule is flexible, you can also take advantage of cancellations that occur during the summer.

The tent cabins at the High Sierra Camps each hold four single cots, so if your party isn't some multiple of four people, you'll be sleeping with strangers - though no doubt you won't be strangers for long. Although cot, blankets, and pillow/case are provided, you need to bring your own sheets.

Staying Outside Yosemite

There's nothing like waking up in the morning and seeing Yosemite Falls out your window. To which I say: good luck with that. There just aren't enough beds in Yosemite for all the people who want to stay here in the summertime. If you desire indoor lodging and you didn't plan ahead and get your reservations some months out, you'll probably end up at a motel somewhere outside Yosemite.

There are worse compromises, though. Several small towns lie within reasonable distances of Yosemite, some closer to Yosemite attractions than any lodging alternatives in Yosemite itself.

El Portal is one of the most popular options. It's on Highway 140, just outside the Arch Rock Yosemite entrance and only about 10 miles from Yosemite Valley. The large and accurately named Yosemite View Lodge is, in fact, right on the Yosemite border, though the Yosemite views here are not particularly famous ones.

Fish Camp lies two miles outside the park's southern entrance on Highway 41. It's only four miles from the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias - closer than any hotels or campgrounds inside Yosemite itself.

Lee Vining is twelve miles outside Yosemite's eastern entrance, where the Tioga Road meets Highway 395, and more famously, on the banks of Mono Lake, itself a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. The motels here are closer to the Tuolumne Meadows area than are the closest hotels (though not the closest campgrounds) in Yosemite, which are in Yosemite Valley.

Groveland and Buck Meadows are both less than thirty miles from the Big Oak Flat entrance on Highway 120, and are handy to the Hetch Hetchy area. Groveland boasts a pair of gold-rush era hotels.

Mariposa is 35 miles from the Highway 140 entrance and has an attractive, if short, 19th century main street district. Oakhurst is 15 miles from the southern (Highway 41) entrance and is also within about 10 miles (in opposite directions) of resort area Bass Lake and a large Indian casino/hotel, the Chukchansi.

What to See on Your First Visit

The short answer: Yosemite Valley, the Tunnel View, Yosemite and Bridalveil Falls, the Mist Trail, Glacier Point, the Mariposa Grove, Tenaya Lake, and Tuolumne Meadows.

The not-so-short answer: it depends on what time of year it is, whether or not it's a major holiday, how much time you have, and what kind of shape you're in. Yosemite Valley tends to be crowded in the summer, moreso on weekends, and especially so over holidays like Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day. Still, you haven't seen Yosemite if you've never seen the valley, so for your first visit, it's probably worth it no matter what.

In Yosemite Valley:

The Tunnel View is an essential stop on a first visit no matter what time of year. It's on Highway 41, just before you enter Yosemite Valley. If you enter the valley via another road, follow the signs to Bridalveil Fall and then go up the hill another mile or so past it. The view here will be framed by El Capitan on the left and Bridalveil Fall on the right.

The hikes to Bridalveil Fall and Lower Yosemite Falls are short and easy, and are particularly worthwhile in the spring, when water volumes are high. Yosemite Falls usually dries up altogether in the fall, and you have my permission to skip it when this is the case.

The Lower Yosemite Falls trail, per its name, only affords views of the lower section of this 2,425 foot fall. As you drive through the valley you'll pass good places to see the rest of the fall, and it's worth stopping. From the Swinging Bridge you can get a memorable view of the Merced River with the upper falls behind it. There's also a good view of the falls across Sentinel Meadow from Southside Drive (the road that heads eastward into the valley). There won't be signs indicating which meadow you're passing, but it'll be obvious when you've reached Sentinel Meadow - it'll be the one with Yosemite Falls visible on the other side of it. Happily, there's parking all along this stretch. If you have time for an all-day hike, you can get multiple views of Yosemite Falls from the 4-Mile Trail.

The Mist Trail is a longer and steeper hike than either Bridalveil or Lower Yosemite Falls, and hiking it will rule out seeing anything other than Yosemite Valley on a one-day visit. Still, it's an incredible hike, especially in the spring, and you should definitely try to fit it into your schedule. Like the other falls, it grows much weaker in the late summer and the fall, but it's fed by a larger river than either Yosemite or Bridalveil and will always have more volume than they do.

If you're in excellent shape and want a non-traditional introduction to Yosemite, try taking the 4-Mile Trail from Yosemite Valley up to Glacier Point and then the Panorama Trail back down again. Or just go for broke and do Half Dome, Yosemite's most difficult, dangerous, and famous day hike.

In Southern Yosemite:

The only nothing-like-it-in-the-world scene in the southern end of the park is the Mariposa Grove, which makes it a likely candidate for an in-and-out trip if your visit to Yosemite is a short one. It's 30 miles from Yosemite Valley to the grove, with speed limits of 35 mph or less the entire route. If you have an entire day to devote to this area of the park, consider doing both the lower and upper groves and adding a trip around the Wawona Meadow loop, especially during its wildflower season (typically late May and early June), or visiting Glacier Point to cap the day off.

In the Glacier Point Area:

Glacier Point is the most popular stop on the Glacier Point Road, but you can add spice to a trip here by adding a Taft Point/Sentinel Dome loop. Whenever you're visiting Glacier Point, try to make it your last sightseeing destination of the day so you can catch sunset here. Glacier Point is 25 miles from Yosemite Valley.

Along Tioga Road:

The eastern reaches of Tioga Road, where you'll find Tuolumne Meadows, are a long, winding way from Yosemite Valley (48 miles from the valley to the meadows), so it's best to give the Tioga Road at least one day of its own. Tuolumne Meadows is a must see. It's hard to explain what makes a meadow something that must be seen, but it just is. It's full of grass and flowers and deer and whatnot, the Tuolumne River winds through it, and interesting peaks poke up beyond it in various directions.

En route from Yosemite Valley to the meadows, you'll pass a few roadside attractions that are too good to pass up. Olmsted Point has terrific views of Clouds Rest and a less famous vantage point of Half Dome, and Tenaya Lake is almost indescribably beautiful, especially looking east from the western shore. If you have time for more than just wandering around the low-hanging fruit you can see from the road, there are several hikes to pretty lakes off the Tioga Road - Cathedral, Gaylor, and May Lakes especially, but Elizabeth and Dog Lakes are also worth the effort. Be warned that all these hikes involve significant climbing early in the trails.

More Useful Websites

Yosemite Webcams - when you absolutely, positively have to know how things look in Yosemite at this very moment.

10-Day Weather Forecast - readers beware: as the page clearly points out, this is the Yosemite outdoors forecast. Indoor weather may be different.

NPS Current Conditions - the official source for what Yosemite roads, trails, and campgrounds are currently open, closed, or otherwise noteworthy.

CalTrans Road Conditions - type in a highway number to see what's going wrong on any roads outside the park.

Yosemite Maps - maps of Yosemite Valley and the entire park, with links to high-resolution PDF versions.

Yosemite Trail Maps - zoomable Google terrain maps for sundry hikes in Yosemite and the immediate area.

Yosemite News - recent Yosemite news articles, compiled by Google News.

The Yosemite Blog - frequent short updates on Yosemite news and events. RSS feed available.