In my first National Park post of this year “The Western USA Is The Best Place To Take a Holiday Or Tour That I know Of” I stated my opinion the Yellowstone was number 1. If you would like to go to that post you can click here https://bobnuttmann.com/2025/01/12/the-western-usa-is-the-best-place-to-take-a-holiday-or-tour-that-i-know-of/
My second choice would be Yosemite NP. This park is about mid way in California north – to – south. And is on the eastern side of the State. This park has a fabled history that involved John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt. It is the same general area as the “Gold Rush Towns” that caused California to change from a place way out on the west side of the United States, to a destination for gold seekers from all over the World starting in 1848 and 1849. This park is large and has one of the World’s most spectacular valleys that was carved out out by glaciers durning the several ice periods in this part of the World.
The image above is of a small church in the Yosemite Valley and is looking up at the mountains that surround the valley floor. This photo was shot with a Sony A7 3 using a 28mm zeiss 2.8 lens.
I am currently just finishing up on a visit to Redwood National Park and Yosemite National Park. Current date is May 10, 2025. I picked this time to go to Yosemite because this time of year is the best for seeing waterfalls in the Yosemite Valley. The snow is melting so the volume of water in the park waterfalls is huge. We stayed at the Redwoods Cabin in the Wawona area at the south entrance to the park, but in the park. The Redwoods is a collection of individual cabins of various sizes and costs. The prices are fair and the cabins tend to be very well kept. The cheapest ones are a little Spartan. If you want to stay there just look them up on the internet under Redwoods Cabins in Yosemite. They also have a web site to book on line.
Yosemite is an astonishing beauty of a park that is unique of all the places I have been. Half Dome is the result of stupendous power exerted by glaciers to shear off the side of a several thousand foot granite rock. In case you would like to see it in color here is another shot of the same subject.
As I said early in this post, there is a good reason to pick May as the time to see Yosemite, and that is flow in the waterfalls. To show you what I mean here is first a photo I took in October 2019 of Bridal Falls in Yosemite where the water flow is at a low point.
Where to stay in this valley. This time we stayed again in a very nice cabin inside the park located near Wawona and the Mariposa Redwood grove. The cabins are operated by “The Redwoods”. The cabins are individually owned and I have stayed in one three times over the past 30 years. Just look up “The Redwoods in Yosemite” in the internet and book directly with The Redwoods. If you want to stay in the Valley I can recommend the Awahnee. I have stayed there once and it cost quite a bit, but if you can splurge/afford it I would do it. Expect to pay in the range of $600-900 per night. Sometimes it is less. As far as I know Aramark is the official operator of the hotels in Yosemite except for the Redwoods cabins. You can find Aramark at travelyosemite.com . I have stayed at the Yosemite Valley Lodge a few times. It is a relatively nice hotel with a modest food service area. The rooms a fairly good. In the range of $250-300 in 2025. The only fine dining in the area is the main dining room at the Awahnee Hotel. The Wawona Hotel is currently being remodeled. It is quite old and I have heard it badly needed a fix up. Hopefully when that is done it will be another good place to stay. There are lots of camping options and one RV park that I have also stayed at. The RV park has size regulations. When I stayed there 20 years ago it was a 30′ max. They have some fixed tents for rent too. Check the Aramark web site for details.
IN THE AREA OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK – While you are in the area of Yosemite you should look at some of the other points of interest in the area. The me the best park type experience is Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park. This is approximately a two hour drive south from Yosemite. We traveled to this area in early May to catch the high water in Yosemite and I was worried we would have problems with snow in Sequoia. The most common things to see in Sequoia are higher up in elevation than the Yosemite Valley. We stayed in a hotel in Visalia when visiting this park. Visalia is a nice town with a good downtown to visit. We had planned to stay in the park at the Wuksachi Lodge but I switched to Visalia at a lower elevation because of the chance of snow up in the park. That was a mistake. The main park areas were cool but not snowy. Or at least no falling snow. I drove up and down the mountain roads leading in and out of the park from both the south side and north side.
In the area of California just to the west of Sequoia & King’s Canyon plus Yosemite National Parks there are many smaller towns located on highway 49. These towns were built during the Gold Rush period of California in 1848-1850 and much longer. Some of them are quite nice to visit. We stayed in Sonora for 3 nights after visiting Sequoia and Yosemite. We stayed at a Best Western hotel in Sonora. Usually when we stay here we try to stay in one of the very nice Best & Breakfasts that are in the area.
We limited this trip to the western side of the Sierra Mountains because of the season. Plus we ran out of time or we would have liked to go north more on Highway 49 to see several more historic towns. In this general area there is the higher elevations where Lake Tahoe is located, the higher elevations of Yosemite Park, Mammoth California with a wide variety of things to do, mining towns and Mono Lake, Route 395 and Lone Pine, Bishop, Devil’s Postpile National Monument, Schat’s bakery in Bishop, and easily get to Death Valley turning east at Owens Lake, Oh, and the World’s oldest trees in the White Mountains near Bishop CA. And finally the ghost town of Bodie. California is a wealth of points of interest. You can’t live long enough to see them all.
As a footnote / comment. I love to take photos. I have been an avid photographer since I was young. I don’t remember when I took my first pictures, but it was likely about age 6 or 7. I don’t remember my first camera’s. But I do remember vividly when my Dad let me use is Voightlander when I was about 16-17. It had three beautiful lenses, a 50mm f1.5, 35mm 2.8, 100mm 3.5. Since then I have gone through many cameras and today also take many videos. I am not going to list any more which camera I use to take a photo or video because if you have a top end camera like my Nikon Z8 or Z50 and a iPhone from the last year or so, it is many times hard to tell which device took the photo or video. If you really want to know how I got the photo or video just send me a comment and I will let you know.
Bob Nuttmann May 22, 2025
Bob Nuttmann 