We love to travel. We love the USA 🇺🇸and National Parks! We were celebrating our 33 anniversary about 3 months late. We were all ready to go and I broke my pinky toe the night before we left – that didn’t stop us from hiking about 6 miles a day. So read along about our latest experience!

We have never been to Yosemite National Park, but when we had an opportunity to do so – we went with it! We bid on this AutoCamp ‘Glamping’ adventure at a silent auction about a year ago. We got to chose between Russian River wine country or Yosemite.

We flew into Fresno, rented a car and drove to AutoCamp in Midpines, CA. We stopped along the way at the grocery to get supplies for lunches and dinner! https://autocamp.com/yosemite/. We loved our airstream! (Pictures are at the bottom) It had everything we needed! The first morning we were up early. We made our sandwiches and headed to the Park for a day of adventure. It’s about an hour drive to get to the entrance of the park. We had made a $2 reservation on recreation.gov a few months ago. If you do not have a reservation you will be turned around. You then pay $36 for a 3 day pass. It’s a 2 lane mountain road that runs into the valley of Yosemite. If you get to the park before 6 am you don’t need a reservation or if you ride the bus. https://www.yosemitehikes.com/yosemite-info/ten-best-easy-hikes.htm

One of our favorite things we saw was Tunnel view. https://www.yosemite.com/what-to-do/tunnel-view/ It is magnificent! We hiked to the lower Yosemite Falls and it is dried up. Mirror Lake was too, but this is normal for August. The Visitors Center is very Informative. The Yosemite Village has a lot of construction going on. We stopped at Cooks Meadow and looked for climbers. We found a trail that you could walk along bottom of El Capitan. Olmsted Point is also worth the stop! https://www.yosemitehikes.com/tioga-road/olmstead-point/olmstead-point.htm

One of the Park rangers asked where we were staying and recommended we need to go to Yosemite Bugs for dinner. It was about 4 minutes from the AutoCamp. It is located at a hostel type place with a lot of cabins all around. It was delicious though! https://www.yosemitebug.com/

On the second day we decided to venture to the Tuolumme Meadows. It is a 8575-foot-high, sub-alpine meadow. It is located on Tioga Road. We parked at the Visitors center and hiked to Soda Springs. Beautiful views of domes and peaks! It’s an easy walk. We picnicked at The Parsons Lodge. It is open and it is where John Muir had his Sierra Club meetings. We meet 2 very young and friendly park rangers! We then drove to the Tuolumme Grove to see the big sequoia trees! It is a nice down hill hike to see them but coming back uphill was a doozy! On the way to the Grove we had come across a lot of road construction and had noticed this group of about 15 motorcycles. We came around a corner later and at first thought another road construction road closure but it was a motorcycle wreck. We were about 6 cars back .. it had just happened. My husband who is in the medical field went to help. The 2 men involved were both over 70 and from Germany. They didn’t speak English. We were there at least 45 minutes. Once a young park ranger walked up who was also stuck in the traffic said an ambulance was coming, so we decided we could leave. There is zero cell service but one man had a satellite phone and called 911. His phone didn’t work great but he was able to text 911. A little later we were hiking through the Tuolumme Grove we saw an helicopter 🚁, so we thought it might be one of the motorcyclist. One of the men had a broken leg and the other one had a broken pelvis but weren’t not sure what else. If you thought that might be the most exciting thing that happened well .. as we were headed back Jimmy spotted 2 climbers on Fairview Dome. It was very cool. We had been looking for 2 days but had come to find out it was too hot for climbers to climb El Capitan. It was about 104 during the day and 70s at night. We then came back to Autocamp.. after a full day we went for a quick dip in the refreshing pool and then to dinner in Mariposa at Savorys . We recommend it! Excellent service and food!

On the last day we headed back and parked at Upper Pines campground. We rode the bus to Mirror Lake. It was basically dried up and sooo many gnats! The walk to it is paved and nice. We then rode the bus to Mist Trail. We headed up to the Vernal Falls footbridge. Vernal Falls is barely flowing. The path is straight uphill but only .8 of a mile .. we were dying but made it! We then headed on down and it took no time! We then took the bus to see the Ahwahee Hotel. https://www.nationalparkreservations.com/lodge/yosemite-ahwahnee-hotel/

We had heard all about it on a podcast about Yosemite and wanted to see it. It’s old and beautiful. It’s at least an hour and half into park with no traffic. After another full day in the Park we headed back. We went for a quick swim then we decided to buy a pre packaged dinner that the AutoCamp makes for you to cook at your air stream. It was so fun and delicious (pictured below). They gave us a s’more kit for our anniversary and we cooked those too! #33yearsandcounting

If you are interested in going to an Autocamp here is a link. https://fbuy.io/autocamp/finneymoore

Pics from AutoCamp