camping in Yosemite
 

Hi all. Can anyone recommend somenice camp sites? And is second week of May still to cold to camp? We will be camping with our 2yrold.
Thanks for any advice

I think it would be too cold. Most years (and this year has been cold so far), I wouldn't camp before late June. Maybe check out a cabin in Camp Curry.

Here's a link to camping in Yosemite.
http://www.nps.gov/yose/trip/camping.htm
It's hard to get a camp site just like trying to get a room in the valley.

Upper Pines, Lower Pines, North Pines, Wawona and Hodgdon Meadow are open during your visit and they require reservations. Camp 4 is open all year and doesn't require reservations but is available on a first come basis. The others are not open when you will be visiting. Is this tent camping you will do with your 2 year old? It's hard to camp with a little one if you can't be certain of the weather. We camped with our kids beginning about 6 months, but when it got really cold they would cry and wake up our neighbors, Yikes!

We've stayed at the Housekeeping Camp in mid-May a couple times - these are tent cabins, so a little more sheltered than tent camping. It has been chilly but not too bad when we have gone. We have also had our airmatress and several blankets. Mornings, of course, are the chilliest times and we didn't notice many early risers - LOL.

This year the weather has been really strange though, with plenty of late snow. I don't know that I would chance camping that early, esspecially with a little one. Could turn out to be a miserable experience.

It's too cold. Plus you need to buy tickets to go camping in Yosemite. And tickets go really quickly! crazy isn't it?

Induway - I thought the tickets were just for the back country, basically a permit system to regulate the number of people using the area and that for non-back country areas (valley, wawona, etc) that it was a straight reservation system based on campsite availiblity. Am I wrong?

For those campgrounds not on the reservation system, it's a first come basis. You buy the permits to camp, or you try to, when you arrive.

If you want to stay in Yosemite Valley there are three choices of campgrounds. Upper Pines, Lower Pines and North Pines. You can look at pictures of ALL the different campsites at this website!

http://yosemitecampsites.com/

If you want to stay at any of these campgrounds, then you will need to make reservations: http://reservations.nps.gov/parkResu...token=30056368

They do have camp fire restrictions and so you won't be able to have a morning fire:

FROM MAY 1 THROUGH OCTOBER 15 - WOOD FIRES ALLOWED BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 PM AND 10 PM ONLY WOOD FIRES ONLY.FROM OCTOBER 16 THROUGH APRIL 3O - NO CAMPFIRE RESTRICTIONS

The only other campground in the Valley is Camp4 which is a walk in tent only, first come, first serve campground.

If you are tent camping then it will get cold at night. Sunsets early in the valley and it gets cold as soon as the sunsets. We have been in May and had a couple inches of snow. We've also been in April and had warm weather. It's just to hard to tell in advance!

If you do check out the reservation site, you might find that the dates you want are already full, but keep checking back, because people do cancel and dates do open up!

I didn't mention any high country campgrounds, because they will be even colder at night.

Utahtea