Yosemite - A Californian Summer - Part Three

The journey from Lake Tahoe to our AirBnB house in Yosemite took around 5 hours with a short stop en route for petrol and snacks. Make sure you fill up way in advance. Fuel stations are quite rare from quite a long boundary around the Park area so I can imagine there has been a fair few disasters with people getting caught short. It’s hot and barren and definitely not the place you want to find yourself stranded. Some of the roads involve a bit of Cliff hugging inside the park so full concentration is needed! Yosemite is a huge National Park that can take several hours just to get from one side to the other so I recommend planning some routes and things you’d like to do before you arrive. If you come during the summer its highly likely tours will have already sold out before you even arrive. Try Travel Yosemite for more detailed information.

We rented a large house for 10 guests, over 3 nights on Air BnB called ‘River Rock Retreat’ in the El Portal area of the park. As we travelled with friends, two families shared the cost, so it worked out at a reasonable $350 a night per family. Our first morning we headed out to the Visitor Centre to get all the information we thought we’d need and go exploring. I have to say Day one was rather traumatic! We spent a significant portion of the day queuing for car parks, saw near punch ups and lots of frustrated people, realised everything was booked and there’s no telephone signal. Basically meaning, if you get split up from friends travelling in convoy you may as well assume you won’t see find them again until you head back to your accomodation.

We managed to retrieve the afternoon by visiting Bridalveil Fall, which was a pleasantly short walkable amble to the fall, perfect for kids. On the way back, we discovered Sentinel Beach. This little beauty is definitely worth a stop at the end of the day for a paddle in the cold water, and to see crayfish and tiny rocks of gold fleck everywhere in the sand.

The next day we realised the only way to do the park was to get up super early to get into the valley and hiked Lower Yosemite falls. It’s a gentle 1/2 hr round trip to see the lower falls. You can make it more challenging by going to the higher waterfalls but our kids weren’t that enthusiastic and this was a perfect compromise. Make sure you head to the view of both falls on the way back down. Lots of people skip this and it’s a much quieter place to stop. With everything here if you don’t go before 8.30/9am the traffic is so bad it’s just not worth it.

One of the most famous views in yosemite you won’t want to miss is Tunnell View. It is arguably the best vista point in Yosemite. From this breathtaking viewpoint into the Valley you can see three of its most recognisable features. El Capitan, Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall. The whole park landscape is stunning. I love the split rocks all around Yosemite. I don’t know what causes them but they are pretty cool. If you want a real appreciation of the landmarks before you come its worth watching the documentary ‘Free Solo’ on the free climber Alex Honnold who famously manages to climb El Capitan unaided.

You’ll be schooled when you arrive on how to keep bears away from tourist areas by strict guidelines about food and where you can and can’t store it. even leaving a single food item in a car can be enough for them to crush the car and rip the insides out just to get to the goods. Apart from this they are surprisingly hard to spot and you’ll be really lucky if you manage to spot one. Some of our group did. In real life the trees are so dense and the bears so camoflagued its like looking for a needle in a haystack. I spotted a tiny movement in the trees on our way home and managed to see a young bear eating quite high in the hillside above us. It was beautiful to watch but my video is really poor and doesn’t do our experience justice. Just make sure you keep your distance and keep to the speed limits when driving around as they can venture into the roads and lots of bears die every year getting run over by speedy tourists.

My top tips for Yosemite:
1. Know before you go. Find out all the routes you might be capable of doing and check them on the maps before you come including rough distance in time to get to these places. Everything after 7.30am takes longer than listed and way much longer than you think. So many of the roads are cliff hangers so there’s really no option of driving fast. Plus speeding kills bears 🐻! There’s hardly any WiFi or 3G here so you also won’t be able to search when you get here.
2. Carry a map of the park in case you get lost. We got caught out a few times when the sat nav and phones failed with no service.
3. Buy your food before entering the park. You’ll pay premium for everything here.
4. Get up EARLY. This is the most important tip. I mean you need to be out between 7 and 8 am at the latest or it’s just not worth the queues if you are heading anywhere near the valley area - which includes the shop, visitor centre and central trails. We drove around for over 3 hours on our first day trying to find somewhere to park, to go to the visitor centre. We saw punch ups-in the car park because they aren’t manned at all. It is full on carnage. Just take my word for it!
5. Bear watch at all times. You might see one for real. We did!
6. Don’t climb on the rocks! There are loads of people who do this but even when the rocks are dry they can be deadly. The signs say they can be fatal and people literally die doing this trying to get closer for a picture. The currents are strong and the rocks are deadly. Take note!

BASS LAKE

We took the hour and a bit trip out of Yosemite to Bass Lake to get away from the traffic and heat, on the recommendation of a friend who had been there a few weeks earlier. I think I’m not the only one to say this was up there for possibly the best day of the entire month trip. We took out a speedboat for the afternoon which was just so much fun. The lake is big enough to cruise around at speed but not too big to get lost and the gorgeous houses that decorated the view felt like a dream place to live. We LOVE a boat! The water’s really pleasantly warmish and tpretty safe for jumping in and out of the water. The restaurant next door to our rental building did amazing food and cocktails and even brought us out a cheeky take away to the boat when we pulled up to collect. There’s very few perfect days but this was one of them. If you don’t mind driving a boat I highly recommend the speedboat, but the pontoon boats looked fun too if you are a bit more cautious! We used Bass Lake Boat Rentals and again, i’d call up and book ahead in advance to be sure. I’d be interested in researching the area some more to see if this would be a good place to spend a night or two outside of Yosemite if we returned.

Next Stop Monterey!

(I’ll be posting the next part of our trip on Friday. )