Yosemite National Park Day Experience

A park you are handed, not led through

Yosemite is not a route. It is seven square miles of valley floor under three thousand feet of granite, and the only sensible way to see it is to understand how it works and then go at your own pace. The day begins with orientation at the Yosemite Valley Welcome Center, the park's information hub in Yosemite Village: what is open, what the free shuttle reaches, which walks are half an hour and which are half a day. From there the valley is yours. Some of it is flat and paved and takes twenty minutes; some of it climbs three thousand feet. The waterfalls are loudest in spring, the meadows are best in the early light, and the great viewpoints on the approach roads are seen from a vehicle rather than on foot.