I have recently returned from a three-night stay in Yosemite National Park in eastern California, which I reached after a pleasant 5 1/2-hour drive in a rented car from the airport in San Francisco. I went there in late April–still a chilly, off-season of sorts–at a time when the number of other visitors was refreshingly low. And the experience was so memorable that I feel obliged to repeat what multitudes of others before me have also described.
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The great national parks of the United States–especially Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon–are among the crowning glories of our country. They are the highlights of American travel, and not to have visited all three is to have missed something unique and precious in American life.
They are, to begin with, virtually free of charge. Persons 62 years of age and older pay only $10 for a lifetime pass (the Golden Age Passport) to every national park, valid not only for the bearer’s admission but allowing free entrance for everyone accompanying the senior citizen in a car. Persons younger than 62 pay $50 for one year’s unlimited admission to every national park, again including every family member or friend in the car driven by that pass holder.
Once in the parks, you find accommodations for every purse, going down as low as $54 a night for a family of four in a tent cabin with comfortable beds, platform deck and heater. Space for your own tent and sleeping bag, or for your RV, is cheaper still, almost nominal in cost. Cafeterias in every park sell bountiful, tasty meals for under $10. Free-of-charge shuttle buses take you from one major area to another in some parks.
The atmosphere within is one of near-pure, small-d democracy. Although every park has one very upscale lodge (the Ahwahnee in Yosemite, El Tovar in Grand Canyon), most tend to be unobtrusive, and the overwhelming bulk of lodging is in rustic inexpensive cabins, tent cabins and tents. People wear rough sports clothing, generally park their cars out of sight and engage in nature hikes as their chief activity.
Visitors tend to be eagerly supportive of one another. If a coyote or bear is sighted, they enthusiastically draw attention to the animal by waving to others. They freely offer advice and suggestions to one another and are patient in delivering their recommendations. They know that among the visitors to the top parks are tourists from Europe, South America and Asia, and they take special pains to greet and assist those guests.
Unlike the often-unhappy visitor to urban attractions around the world, there does not seem to be a single unsatisfied viewer of these shrines to Mother Nature. Most tourists in Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon appear to walk about in a visible state of enchantment. (We are so surrounded in our normal daily lives by highways, pavement and vehicles that we seem dumbstruck by vast areas of conservation and ecological purity.)
Stand for a moment on a walking trail and view the faces of your fellow visitors, and you will find smiles of relaxation and contentment on almost all of them. In its impact on your sense of well-being, one of the great U.S. national parks is like a giant Jacuzzi, a massive massage table, a steam room. Wealthy patrons of elegant spas spend upward of $600 a day for such contentment, and even then often fail to achieve the relief from stress that one of these wonders of nature provides.
At Yosemite, the great activity is to walk, on level paths through the famous valley and in upward-ascending mountain trails described in their turn as “easy,” “moderate” and “strenuous” in helpful free literature.
Except for evening films and lectures (again free) on natural science and environmental subjects; except for visiting onsite museums of forestry and Native American history; except for boarding one of the very rare motor coach tours of outlying and remote places, you simply walk at your own pace, periodically stopping to enjoy the emotion that comes from viewing some of the most beautiful vistas on Earth.