Yosemite National Park
If you travel to Yosemite and just plan on driving through the park you will need to allow yourself quite a bit more time that you’d expect. Yosemite really has it’s own time zone…..we’ll call it the Woodland Creature TZ haha. I can’t speak about time frame for everyone but for us it was a slow go. There are so many animals and tourists that want to try to stop and take photos of them, as well as the parks many landmarks, it creates a VERY slow line of traffic through the park. However, this is also part of what makes your visit such cool experience (the sights not the traffic) but will take you twice as long as you plan for it to. I would definitely recommend camping there if you have time and can get an open spot or advance reservation. We pulled into the campground parking lot to find young deer just roaming around and birds singing in the trees all while surrounded by the picturesque landscape that Yosemite is known for. All the woodland creatures were out and about just like the Disney original movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I half expected a bluebird to swoop down to give me my campsite reservation confirmation then be escorted by a raccoon to my campsite location within the park. 🙂 Fun to think about anyway. Our campsite was among large boulders among the campgrounds are very large trees. It really is a beautiful place to camp. This was first the campground I had ever been to with bear lockers. They were essentially big metal bins with locks on them in which you had to store all food/accessories other than your tent. I was also new to purchasing park tokens to feed the shower for a stream of water to wash up with and new to gas being $5.00 per gallon (July 2013) crazy huh!?! It’s all just part of the experience haha.
