I have been wanting to camp in Yosemite Valley with my granddaughter for a very long time. I read online about how best to obtain a reservation. On the appointed day I woke up at 5:00am got dressed for work made my lunch and at 6:45am logged on to my computer and started to try and obtain a reservation; every site I tried came back unavailable and of course by 7:07am everything was sold out. I will now have to wait until next summer and try again. I need some OUTSTANDING SURE FIRE tips to obtain a reservation for next year. Your help is appreciated. Thank you for your help. Ctravelgal04
QUOTE(ctravelgal04 @ Jul 17 2010, 07:43 PM) [snapback]23040[/snapback] I have been wanting to camp in Yosemite Valley with my granddaughter for a very long time. I read online about how best to obtain a reservation. On the appointed day I woke up at 5:00am got dressed for work made my lunch and at 6:45am logged on to my computer and started to try and obtain a reservation; every site I tried came back unavailable and of course by 7:07am everything was sold out. I will now have to wait until next summer and try again. I need some OUTSTANDING SURE FIRE tips to obtain a reservation for next year. Your help is appreciated. Thank you for your help. Ctravelgal04 We worked near Yosemite several years ago and in the summer it is packed. They close the velley off when it gets full and lets cars in as cars eave. It is a small valley only a mile wide and few miles long so it gets full fast. I would suggest making reservations several months in advance or staying at one of the private campgrounds in the area. Go early if you can. Early June it isn't too crowded and the water falls are at their peak.
do you know the names of private campgrounds with full hook ups close to yosmite? have been looking at the reviews and there don't seem to be any. any suggestions would be greatly apperciated. thanks
Here's how my family did it. We went to the Reserve.gov website and pre picked sites that would work for us. Pick out several so if your 1st choice isn't available you can move on. have this list handy when booking. I actually made 3 copies (1 for dh, 1 for dd, and 1 for myself). For Yosemite they allow you to book only a few months in advance for their reservation campgrounds. At about 6:55 am California Time we all got on our computers and pre loaded the sites we wanted and made sure we were signed in to the reservation system. We each had about 10 sites in 3 different campgrounds loaded. When reservations opened on the 15th at 7 am (PST) we were ready to book. We each ended up with a site, conferred and decided on which one to keep, then booked it, and released the others. In my research it seems most people do this, this is why most sites are gone early. We were more courteous than others because we did not hold on to all 3 which we could have done until a few days out then cancelled them. On the day we booked for early May all sites were gone within 20 min. When we camped there were always a few sites empty in the Pines campgrounds. There are also walk up sites that you put your name on the list in the morning and they release them at 3 pm each day. I would not have stayed outside the park even though we had NO hookups because you are too far away from the action and I would rather spend that time doing things then driving to get there. Also most of the nearby parks are not that great anyway so the pickins' are real slim.
QUOTE(nedmtnman @ Jul 18 2010, 09:20 AM) [snapback]23043[/snapback] We worked near Yosemite several years ago and in the summer it is packed. They close the velley off when it gets full and lets cars in as cars eave. It is a small valley only a mile wide and few miles long so it gets full fast. I would suggest making reservations several months in advance or staying at one of the private campgrounds in the area. Go early if you can. Early June it isn't too crowded and the water falls are at their peak. Try Groveland CA in the search.
We went to Yosemite last summer and stayed at a private owned RV camp called Yosemite Ridge Resort. Dont' let the name Resort fool you, it's just a small place. The price was right and it was clean and close to the entrance of Yosemite.
