Last month we pulled off a really fun five night adventure to Yosemite National Park. 

Even though Yosemite has been one of the top places we’ve wanted to visit for years, we kept over-analyzing when the best time to go would be. Peak summer: too hot and not enough waterfall flow. Late May: perfect waterfalls but not enough time off with kid’s school schedules. Spring Break: plenty of time but risk of snow. We kept putting it off… until we both got Southwest companion passes for the duration of most of 2024 and 2025 and decided to use them. Have companion pass, will travel.

We flew into Fresno, California – a mere 90 minute drive to Yosemite and 60 minute drive to King’s Canyon/Sequoia. The roundtrip flights were 26,298 points each, and since Tom and I both have a companion pass, we were able to use 78,894 Southwest points for the five of us. The cost of our flights would have been $1970 in cash. 

We booked this adorable cabin using Wyndham points via Vacasa. Vacasa rentals can be booked for 15,000-30,000 points per bedroom per night, and you can get a 10% discount if you hold one of the Wyndham co-branded cards, which we do. We booked this two bedroom cabin for three nights for 81,000 points. I had enough points in my Wyndham account because of opening the Wyndham Business Earner card last year, but Capital One and Citi points also both transfer to Wyndham. The cost of the cabin would have been about $1400.

Booking Vacasa properties via Wyndham just requires a phone call to see if the place is available to be booked on points. They will even wait on the phone while you transfer the points and then book the reservation for you. As of now, it seems to be that properties that cost $250 per bedroom per night or under can be booked for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. Properties that are between $250-500 per bedroom per night can be booked for 30,000 points per bedroom per night. If the cost is over that $500 per bedroom threshold, the place can’t be booked on points. 

Our Fish Camp cabin was the perfect place to base our park adventures. It looked pretty small on the listing, but it was a really nice amount of space for five people. It had two full bedrooms as well as a loft. The furniture was all very comfortable, and we really appreciated that it had both a full and half bath. It was only a five minute drive from the South entrance of the park. Early in the morning it only took about 45-50 minutes to get to Tunnel View in Yosemite Valley, and a little under an hour to get to parking for the Yosemite Valley destinations. I had read about how busy the park entrances could be, but we sailed right through at around 7-7:30am each day we entered. It’s important to check the NPS website for the park – during the summer months you need to purchase a park reservation for the days you want to enter, or you can only enter before 5am or after 4pm. Most reservations for the year were released on January 1, with additional reservations released 7 days before the arrival date.

If (no, not if, when!) we return to Yosemite, I think we will try to stay at one of lodging options in the Valley, but these need to be booked a year in advance. We planned this trip a few months out. If you have the option to stay at Yosemite Valley Lodge, Curry Village, or the Ahwahnee Hotel, I’d highly recommend that. It would be so amazing to just wake up to the beautiful views and so convenient to get to the sights and trailheads first thing in the morning. 

Great room of the Ahwahnee

While in the area, we wanted to check out Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks as well. We booked a night at the Comfort Inn in Three Rivers, California. Citi Thank You Points transfer to Choice Hotels at 1:2, so two rooms here set us back only 30,000 points total. This hotel was entirely adequate, had free breakfast and a decent pool. The pool was very needed, as it was over 100 degrees in the foothills below Sequoia.

Here’s where the expectation rubber meets the reality road in trip planning… I picked this hotel thinking it would be an easier place to stay than near Fresno, and looking at the map, it seemed to be where we wanted to be. I had seen questions about “the conditions of highway” and mostly glossed over them because 1) I thought it was mostly related to weather and snow, and 2) I thought the worst parts of General’s Highway were more north of where we were going to be. Wrong, and wrong. General’s Highway is an extremely winding road that goes through both Sequoia and King’s Canyon, and it gets extremely serpentine heading down the mountains as you move through the park into Three Rivers. So, essentially, we rode through the park and down this harrowing road where we saw at two different car accidents, and then we had to make our way back up that crazy road to get back into the parts of the park we wanted to visit. I’m not saying absolutely do not stay in Three Rivers to visit this park, but I personally don’t think I ever want to ride on that road again. I guess I’m a flatlander.

Exhibit A: all of the squiggles

There are also several lodging options in the Sequoia/Kings Canyon, and if I were planning a trip here again I think that’s what I would do. Yes, I’m using my points and miles blog to tell you that in the future I’d rather pay money and stay in Yosemite and Sequoia, but part of documenting this journey is sharing my real-life lessons learned. Our final night was at a Holiday Inn Express in Fresno. I like this brand of hotel because they tend to have a suite option to fit 5-6 people. It works out great for an airport night, and this giant suite did not disappoint. It was perfect for our tradition of ordering in food and vegging out on our last night because we are totally wiped out after days of running around like crazy people.

Steal this Itinerary:

Day One: Arrive in Fresno around 1PM, pick up rental car. Lunch at In-N-Out Burger, of course. Pick up Instacart order at Aldi, and drive an hour and twenty minutes to Fish Camp. Settle in to the cabin, eat dinner, then head into the park for a sunset-ish hike at Taft Point. This easy, 2 mile round trip hike took our breath away and was an amazing intro to Yosemite. We then drove 10 more minutes down the road to Glacier Point and peered down into the valley, across to the Half Dome, and over to El Capitan.

Day Two: Wake up!! Into the park around 7am and take the hour drive to the valley. Park near Yosemite Valley Lodge and rent bikes there. Ride around the Valley – we went out to Mirror Lake, stopped at the Ahwahnee Hotel for a snack, back around to swinging bridge and scoped out where we’d swim, over to get a closer look at Yosemite Falls, then to lunch in Yosemite Village at the Village Grill. We found the food here to be pretty good and the prices were not as inflated as I expected. We then returned our bikes, changed in a bathroom at Yosemite Valley Lodge, and went swimming on the Merced River near the Swinging Bridge. On our way back to our cabin we stopped at Mariposa Grove to check out Yosemite’s Giant Sequoias, and we were home in time to make pizzas from Aldi naan in our cozy kitchen.

Day Three: Wake up again! Even earlier! Into the park a little before 7am because we have a big hike to do, people! Park at trail parking by Curry Village to tackle the Mist Trail. The parking lot was full by 8am, and it was only later in the day that I realized that this was was also where people with Half Dome permits were parking, and most of them started their grueling ascent before sunrise. The hike we did was a loop to the top of Nevada Falls and back. It was a very strenuous 3.5 miles up to the top of Vernal then on the Nevada Falls, then a more gentle, almost 4 miles down on John Muir trail. We then left our car parked where it was and shuttled to get a snack at Yosemite Village. The shuttles in the valley were really easy to use. Like the National Park Service, I recommend you keep your car in one lot all day and use your legs and the shuttles to get around. After ice cream and shopping for Yosemite merch, we headed towards the cabin with a stop at the Wawona swinging bridge to swim. This is a different “swinging bridge” than the one in the valley. You get there by turning left onto Forest drive near the Wawona Lodge, and following it until you hit a parking lot. You will ask yourself if you are on the right road as you pass a camp and road narrows, but don’t worry, you are. This was a lovely way to end our day.

Day Four: Sleep in! We took it easier this morning and lounged around the cabin before getting packed up for check out. We drove down to Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Park. This was a two hour drive to the Grant Village side, and here we did a hike around the Grant Grove Giant Sequoias. On our drive from there to our hotel in Three Rivers, Ca, we stopped for a hike at the Buena Vista Overlook which was just past the parking for the Kings Canyon Overlook. We made our way through the park and down the squiggly General Sherman highway to our hotel and had decent dinner at the Riverview Grill and Bar before jumping into the pool and then going to bed.

This was such an amazing trip, and we have so many ideas about how to do a return trip. Yosemite, we’ll see you again soon!