Yosemite next April

Have you ever been to Yosemite? April hikes can be limited because of snow/ice. If you aren’t locked in to a date yet I would look for sometime in May. We went a few years ago and Tioga Road didn’t open until the second week of June.

As far as lodging, both times I’ve been I’ve stayed in the Valley. Saves so much time driving in/out of the park each day and after a long day of hiking you can head back to your room and relax rather than load back up in the car and drive for another hour or so.

The Valley is a mixture of hotels and campsites.
The hotels are run through Yosemite Lodging and are decent. Tha Ahwahnee is amazing architecture and a world famous hotel. Not cheap though. The hotels are dated but the convenience of being in the Valley is why they are so valuable.
We’ve stayed in the Yosemite Valley Lodge and been satisfied. It has several outbuildings with about 15 rooms each and right next to Yosemite Falls. We stayed in the Ahwahnee as well just for the experience. If you don’t stay there you have to at least go visit it and maybe have dinner in the amazing dining room.
Curry Village and the Ahwahnee both have tent “rooms” available as well. Much more primitive.

We stayed in an area called Yosemite West in an Airbnb. It has some really nice rentals and it is only about a very beautiful 20 minutes drive (Tunnel View) to the park. Not sure if there are nicer rentals closer than this. Staying in the park is obviously option 1 but this was really nice and worth a look at the link below"

West Yosemite Rentals

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Oakhurst is probably the best place to stay.

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Yep. Check out Bass Lake too. It's only 15 - 20 minutes east of Oakhurst.

The hotels in the park have a generous cancellation policy, or at least they did when I stayed there. Cancelations come up fairly often. Keep checking a couple of times every day and you just might find a room. I found a room for 4 nights in the park within 3 weeks of traveling there.

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Yeah we missed out because of ignorance. Should have booked right at a year early. We're heading to Estes Park Colorado instead.

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Estes Park is a great one as well, but you don’t have to give up on Yosemite just yet. The cancellation policy on Park lodging is 7 days out so a lot of times people will grab several dates and then slowly cancel them as their arrival gets closer. If you are still interested in Yosemite, just keep checking their site daily and you will eventually get the dates you want. In the past I booked one night at a time and had the same room type for 3 consecutive nights but under 3 different reservations. I called and got them consolidated under one res # so we would not have to change rooms.

I’m thinking about going back in mid-May ‘26 climb half dome before permits are required. I’ve been in the lottery the past few years with no luck.

Went a couple of years ago. Driving into the park takes a good while. Try to stay in the park. As other said, the snow pack can be bad. 1/2 the park was closed from the East side road being under 10” of snow almost into July.