This is great!! Thank you!!

Does anyone know an alternative to get tickets to Alcatraz if they are sold out? Went to buy my tickets but they don't have any for the day we will be in San Francisco. Any suggestions?

OK a suggestion for Alcatraz tix--there are many resellers that bundle tix with other things like a City tour. Of course they are more expensive than tix through official site and you may not want the activity that is included. No recommendation , just take a look on Internet for Alcatraz tix -- there are dozens of sites.

Thanks! I will take a look.

We did the bundle with the Segway tours in order to get our Alcatraz tickets. The package deal also included a few hours of parking at a garage on Fisherman's Wharf, which was nice. If you absolutely can't get tickets to Alcatraz, take a Bay ferry instead. It's still a beautiful ride.

It's been years since I've been but the Santa Cruz boardwalk is fun for kids, in an oldfashioned way. Maybe someone who's been there more lately can give a better idea what it's like now.

Thank you!

We just got back from a similar trip. We flew into SF, but since we've been there already, we got our rental car and were on the road to Yosemite by 2PM. Arrived around 7, checked in, had dinner at the Mountain Room Restaurant (you can see the falls while dining), and called it a night. We stayed at the Yosemite Valley Lodge and absolutely loved it. It is wonderful to be across the road from the falls so we would stop by there at least once a day if not twice. The park was quite crowded, which was a negative, but it is what it is. We took the shuttle bus on the first day, but by 10:30-11:00 they were way too crowded for us. One day we rented bikes for the day and spent the time going all over the valley. You may want to look into that option. I think they were around $25 per day.

One thing I highly recommend is the open air tram ride. I booked ours for 6PM at night. By that time, the sun was low in the sky and it was absolutely delightful to spend two hours seeing all of the highlights of the park in the cool of the evening. The tour was narrated and the ranger gave a lot of good and interesting information. Book it now if you are interested. You can always cancel. It was excellent!

Because we didn't feel like driving to Glacier Point and heading back to the Park while we were staying there, we decided to book breakfast at the Ahwahnee early (8:15) on the day we were leaving, and after checking out we drove to GP, spent a bit of time soaking in the scenery, and then left to head over to the Peninsula. We stayed in Pacific Grove. I'll write more tomorrow about that part of our trip.

You will love it. I too think you may want to cut at least a day from the Yosemite portion of your trip.