Photo by Stacy Geiken

–Doug McConnell

Yosemite National Park is one of my favorite places and I’ve been there hundreds of times since I was a little kid. I camped out there and stayed in hotels, motels and trailers. I like to spend the night inside the Park whenever I can, but there are some excellent accommodations just outside of Yosemite’s boundary, too.

Down Highway 120 back towards San Francisco half an hour or so The Groveland Hotel is an historic spot, just look out for the ghosts. Closer to the Park and just off of Highway 120 near the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, the Evergreen Lodge is a terrific base camp for exploring Yosemite and its surrounds. Just beyond the Park’s southern edge on Highway 41, the Tenaya Lodge is a comfortable retreat to hunker down in between forays in Yosemite. On the east side of the Park, at the foot of Tioga Pass and by the shore of Mono Lake, the town of Lee Vining has a variety of good overnight options as does El Portal on the Park’s west side along Highway 140.

Our good friend and my colleague at KRON TV in San Francisco, Stanley Roberts, has written an excellent piece about a lodge in El Portal. Thanks, Stanley, and stay tuned here because we’ll soon be posting a story we shot with Stanley back in San Francisco. He takes us to some of his favorite eateries in the City, places he found working on his own terrific website, www.we8there.com. Check it out, take a look at Stanley’s hotel tip in El Portal and then get to Yosemite as quickly and as often as you possibly can. Tell us where you stay and what you like.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Doug McConnell's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.