Yosemite Travel Blog

Once in a lifetime!  The remarkably dry winter of 2012 in the Sierra Nevada has created unheard-of experiences for Yosemite visitors.  The high-country corridor of Tioga Road is open to vehicles later in the season than it’s ever been in history, and people can access the summertime playground...

Whether you’re skiers or not, you owe your family a visit to Yosemite in the winter.  The park is uncrowded and it’s beautiful – it’s as if there’s a second entire Yosemite in the snowy, quiet time of year.  It’s true that many people are headed to ski (or learn...

Delaware North is hosting a couple of fun New Year’s Eve celebration packages in Yosemite Valley and there’s still space available for you to start off 2012 in a special way.  There is an Ahwahnee Hotel package that includes either a two- or three-night stay, a formal portait sitting, a...

Off of the Glacier Point Road is a lesser-known gem of Yosemite hiking destinations: the top of Sentinel Dome.  If you’ve seen the view from Glacier Point itself, then you know it’s one of the most astonishing landscape views on earth, with thousands of acres of bare granite and thousands...

There are just a couple of weeks left for Half Dome hiking; the park trail crew de-rigs the cables for winter afer Columbus Day weekend. An overnight backpacking Wilderness permit or a Half Dome day-hiking permit is required for any hiking ascent to the summit. There’s a lot of demand for a small...

After being closed for a month for safety upgrades, Yosemite’s grand hotel, The Ahwahnee, is reopening on St. Patrick’s Day. Visitors will again be able to stay in the hotel’s historic rooms and enjoy meals in its great dining room.  Outside the Ahwahnee, the floor of Yosemite Valley...

The Village Store in Yosemite Village is the park’s biggest and most diverse outlet for groceries and park souvenirs.  About half of the store is a small version of your basic grocery store, the other half is t-shirts, knick-knacks, and miscellaneous Yosemite paraphernalia  for visitors.  Among...

Rather than join the weekly winter parade up I-80 from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, and knowing the weather was likely to be unseasonably warm, making for less than stellar skiing conditions, my girlfriend and I headed to Yosemite to experience the joys of the park, sans summertime crowds. Fearful of...

Yosemite Valley’s bears are awake, after a long winter’s nap.  Roughly every other winter some bears stay active in Yosemite Valley, but this was a year when they all crawled away to sleep.  Turns out the Sierra has had an above average snowpack accumulate and the bears avoided all that...

Popcorn flower, fiddleneck, and poppies light up the green canyon of the Merced River outside Yosemite, while 6-9 feet of snow still owns the park’s interior above 7000′ elevation – it’s “Winter fun” in the Sierra Nevada. If you can arrange your Yosemite trip to travel...