Yosemite: the Highway 120 entrance

We are not going to tell you Arnold is a Yosemite base. It is not. The Big Oak Flat entrance on Highway 120 is roughly two and a quarter hours from the cabins, and the Valley floor is about three — six hours of driving in a day, before you have walked anywhere. People do it, and enjoy it, but they do it once in a stay and they leave early.

What Arnold does give you is a quieter, cooler place to sleep that is nowhere near Yosemite prices, with Calaveras Big Trees' giant sequoias five minutes away when you decide the park can wait for another trip.

The route is Highway 4 down to Angels Camp, Highway 49 south through Sonora, then Highway 120 east through Groveland and up to the Big Oak Flat entrance. Fill the tank in Sonora or Groveland; fuel past that point is scarce and expensive.

Yosemite charges a per-vehicle entrance fee valid for several days, and in recent years the park has used timed-entry reservations during peak periods. Whether reservations are required, and for which dates and hours, changes year to year — check the National Park Service's current Yosemite information before you drive, because arriving without a required reservation means being turned around after two hours of driving.

From this entrance, the realistic day is the Valley: Tunnel View, Bridalveil Fall, the meadows under El Capitan, and the Lower Yosemite Fall walk. Park once and use the shuttle rather than driving loops looking for spaces. Waterfalls are at their loudest in May and June and can be nearly dry by late August.

Glacier Point adds a spectacular overlook and about an hour of driving each way from the Valley; its road is closed in winter. Tuolumne Meadows and the high country on Tioga Road are the other Yosemite — open only from roughly late spring to the first big autumn storm, and closer to this entrance than the Valley is. Mariposa Grove, the park's big sequoias, sits at the far southern entrance and is a long detour from Highway 120; Calaveras Big Trees, five minutes from the cabins, is the sensible substitute.

For a lot of guests the better answer is a guided day tour. Small-group trips run from the Highway 120 corridor and the Sonora area, and they solve the two hard parts of a Yosemite day from here: the driving and the parking. You get narration, a plan and a nap on the way home.

Tour departure points matter more than price — a tour that starts in Groveland saves you well over an hour each way compared with one that starts in the Bay Area. Check the pickup location before booking.

If Yosemite is the main purpose of your trip, stay closer to the park and enjoy it properly. If Yosemite is one big day inside a week in the mountains — sequoias, caverns, lakes, a ski hill in winter — then the cabins work well, and they are a great deal quieter and cheaper than anything inside the gates.