Required Reservations to Enter Yosemite Are Ending

GO YOSEMITE: A visit to a pretty valley can fill a person with a vivacious and vibrant outlook, it is true. Think of the dells and vales you've called upon, the places that have been lush with spring blooms or colorful with autumn leaves. You've likely departed with lifted spirit and sweet memories of what you've seen. But Yosemite Valley? There are no rulers, scales, or tape measures that can accurately catalog the vivacious feelings and spirit uplift-a-tude that the world-famous expanse of waterfalls, great granite cliffs, and peaceful meadows can produce in a person. No one would dare pit one valley's beauty against another, but Yosemite Valley's gifts are on such a gargantuan scale, it truly deserves its own stand-alone category. And if you're looking to stand alone, or with a sweetheart, in...

THIS SUBLIME VALLEY... or in the other sublime parts of Yosemite National Park, here's some vivacious news: Visitors will no longer be required to make an advance reservation before entering the park, starting on March 1, 2021. (Lodging reservations and wilderness permits require separate reservations, do note.) There's plenty to know about driving into the park, including entrance fees, how to book lodging, and securing wilderness permits, so before you pack the snacks and check the oil, you'll want to read all on this page. There are also a number of pandemic-related protocols in place around the park, so reviewing everything you should prepare for, prior to your arrival, is important.

GOOD TO KNOW? The annual Horsetail Fall spectacular, which finds the light of the setting sun casting a fiery glow on the epic waterfall, has concluded for 2021. But coming up in the spring? Ethereal waterfall action, at several points of that vivacious valley, as winter melts into a warmer time of year.