Camping and lodging outside of Yosemite NP

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Finding a campsite inside Yosemite National Park during the peak season has never been easy. If you didn’t book something the minute the sites become available you’re pretty much out of luck and unfortunately most people don’t cancel and sites will sit empty.  Come on, cancel your site if you’re not going to use it!! Be a good human!

We’ve been going to Yosemite since our kids were little, we’ve camped in the village, up in Tuolumne meadows, we’ve stayed in tent cabins in curry village and also backpacked to remote locations. We had to get a little creative in the summer of 2020 with the park being open, but camping closed. So I thought I’d share with you what we learned.

These are a few places outside of the park that you might want to consider. Also remember to get your entry reservation before making the trek. Several national parks are requiring an entry reservation.

Last summer we stayed in Fish Camp at the Summerdale Campground. It’s off of highway 41 only 1.5 miles from the south entrance of the park. You can reserve a site through recreation.gov One night stay is $34. They also have a few first come first serve sites that you have to claim in person.

Inside the park, along that same road is Yosemite West. It’s  a small community, located in the southern area of Yosemite National Park near Wawona road. We rented a cute little house off of AirBnB for an early April trip.

Off of HWY 140 from the west side of the park there are a few hotels and camping locations you can find. But if you want to boondock, you’ll be out of luck. The locals are onto vanlifers and have signs up everywhere to keep people from spending the night on their property. We ended up staying at Indian Flat RV park for one night out of desperation. We were self contained in a van and it was a cheap one night stay with hot free showers, flushing toilets and running water. They do have ten cabins and cottages starting at around $135 a night. But if you just want to camp it’s between 20-30 a night.

This location is about 30 minutes from the park entrance.

If you’re coming from the 395 from the East entrance you have a few more camping choices. There are 10 public campgrounds in the Inyo National Forest near Yosemite’s tioga pass entrance and all ten are first come first serve.

Out of the 10 three are next to lakes. Since Tioga road closes in the winter the sites are generally only open June – October with weekends in July and August being the busiest times. Just know if you’re going during those times, you’re going to have competition.

The only campground that I’ve stayed at on the east side was Saddlebag lake which is about 5 miles off Tioga Road. There are 21 sites and the fee is $24 a night. The only downside to first come first serve sites is you may hear cars going by pretty much all night as hopefully campers look for an open site. At least that’s what we experienced when we were up there close to Labor Day weekend. Your best chance of getting a FCFS site is in the morning when others are packing up. Walk around and see who might be leaving and kindly ask if they are, and if you can nab their site after they leave.

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