Tips on visiting Yosemite?

Where are you planning on staying? It's gonna be busy in July. If you haven't been there before it will blow your mind.

I don't know what type of research you can do on this, but I heard in the last couple years of people sitting in line to get in for hours. This July is going to be a mad scramble with everybody traveling post-COVID. Not to be negative, but you might want to somehow plan around avoiding the peak crowds.

Get up extremely early and get going to the first place you want to be that day. Traffic is a disaster in the park.it was horrible back in'77 too.

You are gonna want to get real familiar with this site, real soon. Almost everything is booked up for the summer. I would stay in the park if you can so you only have to enter once. Theres restaurants and a grocery store in the valley so you never really need to leave. I've been there in April and October. The water falls are amazing in the spring, the weather is incredible in the fall. Mariposa, Fish Camp and Oakhurst are a bit of a haul to get into the park with traffic. Driving from Seattle will take at least a full day.

https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/reservations.htm

Been a long time since I visited last. Been a few times around the Mammoth race date. Didn’t seem to crowded in the mid 90s.

We stayed in a town called Portal around the area. Fish right out if the river that runs through the park.

Devils Postpile is also pretty cool. Can’t remember how far it is.

Yosemite is definitely a national treasure!! One of the coolest and awe inspiring places I’ve ever seen!

Have fun!

If you have time exit out through the east side into lee vining, mono lake is surreal ..looks like something out of a moonscape, the lake was ruined by over usage of water, in large part by Los Angeles as it drew the water down the salt base in the lake raised the salinity level until it killed everything except for microscopic brine shrimp ... these photos I just fetched from the internet quickly so you could see a little bit about what I was saying

Not a great pic but it's sunset from a hot springs just north of Mono Lake

The Valley from the Wawona tunnel

Half dome from the pines campground
El Cap from the meadow

A great place to go on honeymoon!

If starting in Seattle. I would make sure to drive through Humboldt to see the tallest coastal redwoods on the way. Then compare them to some of the fattest sequoias by Yosemite. Also, drive through south lake and down the eastern Sierra's to get there if you have the time. Some beautiful country. But that route will add a couple days to just bombing down the armpit of Oregon and CA, I-5.

We camped in Yosemite in July 2019 for an extended weekend and holy hell was it busy. The parking situation in Yosemite Valley was a shit show, so plan to get there as early as possible. For your trip from Seattle, I would recommend cutting to go down the Oregon coast and then into the Redwoods in Northern California. Then if you can swing accommodations, cut back over to Lake Tahoe and go down Hwy 395 to pass Mono Lake that FishBone mentioned above. Then you can enter Yosemite from the east side and see that beautiful scenery on your way to the Valley.

Rush creek lodge.

One of my all time vacation spots back when I was in my teens and early twenties.
It was a lot different back than though in the 70's where you could just pull right into a camp spot.

I had heard some huge Japanese company purchased the Valley area and now you had to be bused in? That was a long time ago so memory could be foggy.

At some point the hotels and concessions were leased to private corporations by the NPS to run them. It used to be the Delaware North Corporation then it changed hands to Aramark. There was something about DNC said they owned all the names so they had to change them all including the Ahwahnee Hotel which was bullshit. Something happened and they changed back to their original names. That may be what you are referring to.

Fires have been bad the last few years. I would say early-mid spring would be the best time to go. Mid-summer is prime fire time and the smoke sucks! I agree with the guy above, take the 199 over to the coast, down through Humboldt, stay/camp in Trinidad, and take the 299 back over to Yosemite.

Funny, I'm heading there in August (first time as well). I'll piggyback and say thank you for the info in this thread.