Tuolumne Meadows: Yosemite's Hidden Gem of a Campground

One of the tricks with campgrounds in Yosemite is that you either have to 1. Book 5-6 months in advance on the exact correct date within 15 minutes of the site becoming available online, or 2. risk a walk-up by standing in line starting as early as midnight the night before you want to camp.

Enter Tuolumne Meadows, an incredibly beautiful campsite within Yosemite that doesn't normally become available until early June AND leaves half of their sites open to first-come, first-served campers. I was thrilled to grab a spot at Tuolumne online for mid-June with just one-week's notice, and there were even a handful of spots still available when we arrived. The campground is about an hour-and-a-half drive from Half Dome and other sites in "the valley," but there's so much to see and do closer to Tuolumne with a bonus of avoiding the standing-room-only crowds. I would definitely stay here again and fully enjoyed coming in from the east side of Yosemite with its breathtaking mountains (we normally enter from the busier west side).

The Campground

Tuolumne is a large campground surrounded by trees, tiny rivers, and breathtaking meadows. As with all campgrounds in Yosemite, there's no electricity, water hook-ups, or showers, but there are water faucets and flush toilets throughout. One thing to note is that camp sites vary greatly, so if you can scope out your site first in person or online, it's worth the research. For example, our site was so large and set back from the road that at first we couldn't find it, while our neighbor was right next to the road and barely had room for their camper and absolutely no privacy. There's also a large group campground, horse camp, backpackers camp (permit required), ranger program, and a really cute visitor center a 1/2 mile away.

Product Review: Gregory Grandeur Series Sucia 28 Backpack

My absolute favorite day pack is an old Gregory Iris that I've had for almost a decade, so as a family we were pretty darn excited to win TWO Gregory backpacks in a recent dyrt.com contest. For my oldest son, we chose a Gregory Grandeur Series Sucia 28 with the hopes that it would do double duty as both a camping/day pack as well as a school bag he can take to class and soccer practice.

The pack has three main areas he'll be putting to use: first is an outside mesh stuff bag for stinky soccer clothes, muddy cleats and/or wet clothes for camping and summertime trips, second is a large internal area with padding for both a laptop as well as an ipad and a small zippered mesh area for keys/chapstick etc., and finally there's a second large internal area with dividers for things such as pens, pencils, notebooks, etc. There's also a separate, smaller top zippered area for keys/wallets/phones as well as spots for water bottles on both sides. All-in-all, a pretty perfect setup for both school and road trips.

So far after putting the pack through the ringer during our recent 1700-mile road trip, it still looks brand new and passed every test as far as usability and comfort. It's the perfect size to fit the basics for a night or two of camping including sleeping bags, clothes, etc., as well as the pounds and pounds of books he'll be taking to middle school. For reference in looking at the photos, my older son is 5 feet tall and the pack fits him well now and should also grow with him just fine (it also fits my husband well who's 6-feet-tall). The red bag in the photos is the Gregory Miwok 18, worn by our younger son who is 4 feet tall.

Pros:

Sturdy and well-made. I keep noticing features such as the reinforced stitching at the stress points and the reinforced zipper pulls.

Perfect combination of features for both work/school and camping.

Looks great and feels comfortable.

Cons:

My only wish for this pack is that the outside mesh are was the tiniest bit bigger to more comfortably fit a soccer ball. I know, this is a pretty specific request and there are other bags specifically for soccer balls, but just a little bit more room there would be ideal and they we wouldn't have to cram it in quite so tightly (though it does actually fit with some pushing).

I was also going to add a "key clip" request for an inside pocket, and then I looked inside the small mesh compartment near the laptop area and found one (and felt kind of dumb when I found it). It really is a pretty perfect pack for our needs, and with my experience with other Gregory bags, I'm pretty confident it should hold up well.