We spent four nights at Yosemite’s Hodgdon Campground.

Hodgdon is at the entrance to the park from Hwy 120.

I’ll tell you a little about the campground.  There are no hook-ups, but there are two bathrooms, no showers.  There is a sink outside the bathroom where you can get water in containers, but there are no water spigots around the grounds. There is a dump station in the village, about 20-25 miles away.   You can’t tell from this picture, but this campsite is VERY unlevel….as are  almost ALL the sites.  This is a pull through, but the front of WS hit the ground as I was pulling in.  A neighbor helped me get situated in the only spot within this site that was even slightly level.  A lot of the sites were for tents only, and for tents this is a great campground.  Each site has a picnic table, a firepit/grill combo, and a bear proof locker for food.  I was told that this campground usually fills up last, and it filled up most every evening that I was there.  This is April, certainly not prime time for Yosemite, so I would recommend reservations, literally months in advance, and especially if you want to camp closer to the village.  Some of the campgrounds in the park aren’t open until sometime in May.

Entering the park costs $30 now, free with the Senior Pass.  The campground regular price is $26 a night, $13 with the pass.  Shuttles throughout the valley are free.

Yosemite in the spring is a wonderland of water and green.  There is beauty just everywhere you look.

You desend into a valley with towering rock walls all around you….and a river runs and tumbles and falls through it…the mighty Merced. (Mighty at this time of year anyway.)

I think I could spend the rest of my life sitting and looking at the Merced River.  It mesmerizes me.

The first time I was at Yosemite when I was 16, I terrified my mom.  I wandered away and my parents couldn’t find me for awhile.  I must have been fascinated with the river even then because when they did locate me, I was sitting on a huge rock out in the river.  I’d climbed out there from one rock to the next, didn’t get wet at all, and because the rapids are so loud, I never heard them calling me.

I didn’t do that this time.  🙂  Not quite as sure-footed at age 66 as I was at age 16!

I have a lot of concern about the amount of visitors Yosemite sees every year.  Even in April in the rain and snow, parking areas were often full.  People can be careless with trash, and not much regard is paid to speed limits, which causes the deaths of animals that wander into the road, like deer and bear.

But I would urge you to see this place if you never have!  Just be respectful of all that is here.  I know you will be!  If you like to hike there are endless trails that open awe-inspiring sights at every turn.

Please treat this awesome place and the wildlife within  with a huge amount of respect, so it can survive and thrive!  If you can walk or bike or take shuttles in the valley rather than drive, that’s excellent!  

I have to say, this is one of the most difficult places for taking dogs, that I’ve been.  Trying to find the limited trails that I could take Joy and Shiloh on wasn’t easy, and I may have ended up in some places where they weren’t supposed to be, although no one said anything to me.  It was much easier to follow the ‘dog rules’ at the Grand Canyon, because they were clearer.

We found another quiet area of the river near a picnic area where they were able to take a dip…

It got deep quickly here.   Shiloh (left) doesn’t like deep, but Joy doesn’t mind at all!

The other issue  I had was getting in and out of the park.  There is no easy way from the south or west…all the roads are mountainous, winding roads.  When I went in on Sunday, I used the route recommended by my GPS and by Google, which was from Chowchilla to take Hwy 140 to 49 to 120, with a couple of connecting ‘shortcuts’.  Ugh. Hwy 49 was especially scary and 120 was no picnic either.  If I were just driving this route, it would be ok, but towing, I wasn’t happy and I didn’t want to use the same route coming out.  After talking to a couple of rangers I decided to leave using Hwy 140.  Much better!  Except if I was coming IN by 140 could I make it through this?

This is the Arch Rock entrance to Yosemite from Hwy 140!

AND, Hwy 140 allows nothing longer than 45 feet shortly after the tiny town of El Portal just outside of the park, because of some construction that is happening now, and looks like it will be happening for quite awhile.

Possibly next time I go, if I’m towing my little home, I may leave it at an RV park somewhere outside of Yo, before the twisty, turny, road.  Just a thought.

At any rate, however you get there, once you arrive, it’s WELL worth the effort!