Let me tell you about the most American thing you can do: pay $35 to sit in a traffic jam on a two-lane road while a family of four from Nebraska argues about whether they packed the trail mix.
Welcome to Yosemite National Park, where roughly 4 million people a year come to experience the sublime majesty of nature, mostly through a windshield.
The park is genuinely one of the most breathtaking places on Earth.
El Capitan juts 3,000 feet straight up like the planet flexed a muscle.
Half Dome looks like somebody took a bite out of it and just left it that way.
It's the kind of scenery that makes you feel small and insignificant, which is also how you'll feel when you realize you forgot to book a campsite six months in advance.
Here's the thing nobody tells you before you go: getting into Yosemite in summer is a competitive sport.
Since 2024, the park has required reservations during peak hours, which means you're now competing with thousands of other people who also watched that one Ken Burns documentary.
Miss the window and you're stuck in a line of cars stretching back to Groveland.
The deer just walk around eating your bumper.
Yosemite has approximately 400 black bears, and every single one of them has apparently read the manual on how to break into a Honda.
Park rangers will tell you to use bear lockers, which is solid advice that roughly 40% of tourists ignore because they assume their cooler is somehow bear-proof.
Your cooler is a bear's version of a drive-thru.
Social media turned places like Taft Point and the Firefall viewing area into the outdoor equivalent of a Black Friday sale.
People literally sprint to grab a patch of dirt for the perfect photo, sometimes while standing on cliffs that have killed experienced hikers.
In 2019, two visitors fell to their deaths at Taft Point while taking photos near the edge.
But here's the part where I stop being a jerk for a second.
Standing in the valley at sunrise, watching light crawl across the granite, you forget about the traffic and the reservation system and the guy who brought a drone.
The park protects 750,000 acres of wilderness, and the National Park Service is genuinely trying to keep it from being loved to death.
That's a real tension, and it's not going to get easier as more people show up every year.
My hot take: go anyway, but go in October.
The crowds thin out, the light turns golden, and the bears are busy doing bear stuff instead of mugging you for a Clif Bar.
Final Thoughts
Nobody wants to be that person, and the rangers will absolutely find you.