Three Days in Crowd Paradise

It had been almost 60 years since I had been to “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter” (John Muir).

- Daniel Haddock

The first time was with my family as a young boy and now well past retirement age, I was meeting former Palm Springs High School classmates for a three-day excursion to Yosemite National Park in October 2016.

We travelled from various points, one from Southern California, Richard, who picked me up at LAX from Auckland, and two from Northern California, Al and John.

We all met at the International Hostel in Groveland. The hostel lived up to its name with first time visitors from a range of countries to the US making Yosemite their initial destination. Certainly a good choice!

Groveland is the last town on Highway 120 before the entrance to this sprawling 3,027 km national park. It features great coffee shops and a rollicking saloon.

Yosemite National Park

Each morning we would drive the 40 kilometres through the Stanislaus National Forest to the park entrance.

The evidence from the 3rd largest wildfire in California’s history, the 2013 Rim Fire, which burnt an area of 1,041 km2, was painfully obvious. Everywhere you looked was still charred even after three years. It was the largest wildfire in the Sierra Nevada range ever and only contained after a “9-week firefighting battle”.

Luckily, this fire did not appear to have damaged the Yosemite Valley, so ‘normal transmission’ resumed as you crossed the park boundary.

From there, you still had a 30 minute drive to the main park entrance. The Tuolumne and Merced rivers, along with Bridal Veil and Illilouette Creeks, generate the many spectacular pools and waterfalls that dot the park.

This is a popular park with over four million visitors annually. The Visitor Centre and complex includes accommodation, camp grounds, hotels, cafes, and displays. The focus in national parks globally is balancing the preservation of wilderness areas against the impact from ever increasing visitor numbers.