We’re making Yosemite even more unforgettable by staying at the legendary Ahwahnee Hotel—an architectural icon with a history as grand as the park itself.

This unique stay transforms the trip from amazing to once-in-a-lifetime

 Overall Trip Highlights

• The Ahwahnee, for two nights, on the floor of Yosemite Valley. Most people who come to this park see the 1927 landmark from the outside and drive back out to a motel. We check in, twice, and the walk from dinner to bed is a staircase.
• Dinner in The Ahwahnee Dining Room. A hundred and thirty feet long under a thirty-four foot ceiling on peeled log columns, with the granite going dark in the windows. It is a night worth packing a dress for.
• Tunnel View, El Capitan and Half Dome. The rock faces every American has seen in photographs since childhood. Standing in El Capitan Meadow with three thousand feet of granite going straight up is not the same experience as the photograph, and there is no way to find that out from home.
• Mariposa Grove and the Grizzly Giant, a tree that has been standing in that spot for roughly three thousand years, among more than five hundred mature giant sequoias. We have the whole middle of the day in the grove. A coach tour gets an hour.
• A full guided day in Yosemite Valley with a naturalist, not a bus window and forty minutes at a pull-out. By the end of it the walls of the valley are readable: where the glacier sat, why the domes crack the way they do, what the black streaks are.
• A naturalist-led hiking day with two routes leaving after breakfast, four hours or eight. Every woman picks her own, both are guided the whole way, and the eight-hour route is there for anyone who has been waiting for someone to offer it.
• A full week inside one national park. Eight days, four nights at the South Gate and two on the valley floor, rather than the single hurried afternoon most Yosemite itineraries hand out.
• October in Yosemite, which is the whole reason for these dates. The summer traffic is gone, the light comes in low and gold off the granite, the Mariposa Grove shuttle is still running and the winter road closures have not started yet.
• A group small enough that everyone knows everyone by Tuesday. Twelve to fourteen women, and every single one of them booked this by herself. Nobody is the odd one out, because nobody came with anybody.

Day One: Everybody Lands

Flights come into Fresno Yosemite International through the morning and early afternoon, and a Beatrice Bradley hostess is at baggage claim for every one of them. Luggage goes in the van, and then it is about an hour and a half north up Highway 41, through the last of the orchards and into the pines, climbing the whole way.

Tenaya at Yosemite is in Fish Camp, ten minutes short of the park’s South Entrance. We check in with time to spare, unpack for four nights, and take an hour to ourselves before happy hour. Then dinner, all of us together, which is where the trip actually starts. Twelve or thirteen women who arrived alone that morning, working out over the first course who lives where and who has done this before.

Overnight: Tenaya at Yosemite Transfer: Fresno airport to Fish Camp, about 1 hour 30 minutes

Highlights

• Met at baggage claim at Fresno Yosemite International. No shuttle desk to find and no rental counter to stand at. A hostess with a name badge and the luggage cart.
• The drive up Highway 41 into the Sierra Nevada, out of the San Joaquin Valley orchards and into ponderosa pine, gaining about four thousand feet.
• Check-in at Tenaya at Yosemite, where we unpack once and stay four nights.
• Happy hour and the welcome dinner at the resort, with both hostesses and the whole group, a short walk from our own rooms.

Day Two: The Giant Sequoias

Some of these trees were already ancient when the Roman Empire fell.

Mariposa Grove is the largest sequoia grove in Yosemite, and it holds more than five hundred mature giant sequoias. It is fifteen minutes from our hotel, which is the entire reason we chose Fish Camp. After breakfast we drive to the Welcome Plaza and take the park shuttle in. Private cars are not permitted on the grove road, so the shuttle is not a compromise; it is the way everyone goes, and it drops us at the trees instead of half a mile from them.

Giant sequoias do not photograph. The scale refuses to fit in a frame, and the only way to understand what a two-thousand-year-old tree is doing is to stand at the base of one and look up until the neck complains. The Big Trees Loop is a flat third of a mile on boardwalk and packed dirt and it is fully wheelchair accessible, so nobody is left at the trailhead. Anyone who wants more can carry on around the Grizzly Giant Loop, two miles with about three hundred feet of climbing, out past the Bachelor and Three Graces and the Grizzly Giant itself, a tree so heavy its lower limb is thicker than most trees are tall.

Box lunches come with us and we eat under the trees. In the afternoon we ride back out and return to Tenaya, where the hot tubs will be a very popular idea.

Overnight: Tenaya at Yosemite, Fish Camp 

Highlights

• Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, the largest grove in the park, with more than five hundred mature giant sequoias.
• The Big Trees Loop, a flat, fully wheelchair-accessible third of a mile on boardwalk and packed dirt through the lower grove.
• The Grizzly Giant and the Bachelor and Three Graces, on the optional two-mile loop for anyone who wants the longer walk.
• The Mariposa Grove shuttle, which takes us past the traffic the private cars are not allowed to make in the first place.
• Box lunch among the sequoias, eaten sitting down, under the trees, with the whole middle of the day here rather than the forty minutes a coach tour allows.
• The pools, the five hot tubs and the Ascent Spa waiting at Tenaya when we get back, all included in the stay.

Fun Fact: The Grizzly Giant is estimated at roughly three thousand years old, which makes it one of the oldest living giant sequoias in the world and considerably older than the Colosseum.

Day Three: Yosemite Valley, All Day, With a Guide

This is the day the postcards came from.

We leave early and head into the valley with a naturalist guide for the whole day, and the difference a guide makes here is the difference between looking at granite and understanding it. Yosemite Valley is a glacier’s work: a river canyon that an ice sheet widened into a U and polished, leaving the domes and walls standing where the softer rock used to be. That story is what turns a wall into a thing worth staring at for an hour.

We start at Tunnel View, which is the one everyone knows and is somehow still better in person, with El Capitan on the left, Bridalveil Fall on the right and Half Dome closing the far end. From there we come down to Bridalveil Fall itself, a paved half mile round trip to the viewing area; Bridalveil is one of the few falls in the park that runs all year, and in October it comes down in the light, swaying drift it is named for. Then El Capitan Meadow, standing at the bottom of a granite face that rises more than three thousand feet straight off the valley floor, close enough to pick out the climbers.

Late morning we walk the Lower Yosemite Fall loop, a mile of level paved trail that puts us at the foot of the tallest waterfall in the park. In late October the fall is running low or has gone quiet for the season, and what is left is the bare cliff it comes off, two thousand four hundred feet of it, which is its own kind of astonishing and which most summer visitors never see. Lunch comes with us on the trail. We finish at Valley View, on the Merced River, where El Capitan and Bridalveil come together in the water, and we are back at Tenaya by late afternoon.

Overnight: Tenaya at Yosemite, Fish Camp 

Highlights

• A full guided day in Yosemite Valley with a naturalist, from morning until late afternoon.
• Tunnel View, the whole valley in one frame: El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall and Half Dome.
• Bridalveil Fall, a paved half-mile round trip to the viewing area, and one of the few falls in Yosemite that runs year round.
• El Capitan Meadow, at the base of a granite wall rising more than three thousand feet off the valley floor.
• The Lower Yosemite Fall loop, a mile of level paved trail to the foot of the park’s tallest waterfall.
• Valley View on the Merced River, where El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall reflect in the water.
• Trail lunch in the valley, included, eaten in the middle of all of it.

Fun Fact: Yosemite Falls drops 2,425 feet in three stages and is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America. It runs roughly November through July and peaks in May, which means autumn visitors get the cliff without the water. Bridalveil, fed differently, keeps going all year.

Day Four: Wawona in the Morning, the Resort in the Afternoon

The quiet end of Yosemite, and then an afternoon we do not have to earn.

Wawona sits in the park’s southern corner and it is where Yosemite kept its history. After breakfast we drive up to the Yosemite History Center, an outdoor collection of buildings moved here from all over the park: a homestead cabin, a jail, a studio, the Wells Fargo office, the wagons and stagecoaches that carried the first tourists up a road that took two days. The buildings are shuttered for the season by late October, which is honestly when the place is at its best, standing in the pines with nobody else around and interpretive signs to read at whatever pace suits.

The Wawona Covered Bridge is a few steps away, crossing the South Fork of the Merced. Galen Clark built it in 1868, and the Washburn brothers roofed it over in 1879 because they were from Vermont and missed the look of home. It is one of only about a dozen covered bridges left in California. From there the meadow trail runs out into open grass ringed by tall pines, flat but uneven underfoot, and we walk as much of it as the group feels like.

We are back at Tenaya after lunch and the rest of the day is deliberately ours, at the resort, hosted. Archery, the climbing wall, a guided nature walk, badminton and the game room are all included in the stay and the hostesses will get anyone signed up who wants in. So are the pools, the five hot tubs and the Ascent Spa. Or a chair, a book, and the pines. This afternoon is the reason the back half of the week works, because tomorrow we move hotels and Saturday is a hiking day.

Overnight: Tenaya at Yosemite, Fish Camp 

Highlights

• The Yosemite History Center at Wawona, historic buildings gathered from across the park, with the original stagecoaches and wagons.
• The Wawona Covered Bridge, built in 1868 and roofed in 1879, one of about a dozen covered bridges left in California.
• The Wawona meadow trail, flat open grass ringed by ponderosa pine, walked as far as the group wants to go.
• Archery, the climbing wall and a guided nature walk at Tenaya, all included in the stay and all optional.
• The Ascent Spa, the pools and the five hot tubs, with a full hosted afternoon to use them.
• A slower afternoon by design, sitting between the valley day behind us and the move to The Ahwahnee tomorrow.

Fun Fact: The Washburn brothers covered the Wawona bridge in 1879 for no structural reason at all. They were homesick Vermonters and wanted it to look like the bridges they grew up with.

Day Five: We Move Into The Ahwahnee

Friday, October 23

Tonight we sleep on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

Bags out after breakfast and back into the park, this time to stay. The Ahwahnee opened in 1927 on a meadow below the Royal Arches, built to convince wealthy travelers that a national park could be worth their winter money, and it worked so well that the building itself became one of the reasons people come. Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed it. The Park Service made it a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

We check in early enough to wander before dinner. The Great Lounge runs the width of the wing, with tall windows set with stained glass, and it is the sort of room that makes people lower their voices without being asked. There are Native American designs worked into the floors and ceilings, tapestries, and fireplaces big enough to stand in.

Dinner is in the Dining Room, which is a hundred and thirty feet long under a thirty-four foot ceiling on peeled log columns and windows that hold the last of the light on the granite outside. It is a proper dinner and the hotel asks for proper attire: a dress, a skirt or slacks with a blouse. One nice outfit in the suitcase covers it. Afterward there is the Great Lounge and the fire, for as long as anyone wants to sit, and the walk back to bed is a staircase.

Overnight: The Ahwahnee, Yosemite Valley Transfer: Fish Camp to Yosemite Valley, about 1 hour

Highlights

• The Ahwahnee for two nights, a 1927 National Historic Landmark on the floor of Yosemite Valley.
• Dinner in The Ahwahnee Dining Room, a hundred and thirty feet long under a thirty-four foot ceiling carried on peeled log columns.
• The Great Lounge, with its stained glass, tapestries and fireplaces, for the evening afterward.
• An afternoon check-in with time to explore the hotel, rather than arriving in the dark and going straight to dinner.
• Being inside the park overnight, where the valley empties out after the day visitors drive home.

Fun Fact: Stanley Kubrick’s designers studied The Ahwahnee’s Great Lounge when they built the Overlook Hotel sets for the 1980 film of The Shining. Stephen King’s novel was inspired by a different hotel entirely, in Colorado.

Day Six: A Day on the Trails

Two hikes leave after breakfast. Both of them are the right one.

Breakfast at The Ahwahnee, and then a naturalist-led hiking day with two routes going out. One is about four hours, paced with plenty of stopping, on trails chosen for what they show rather than how hard they are. The other is a full eight hours for the women who hike at home and have been waiting all week for a real day out. Both groups leave from the same place, both have a guide, and there is no wrong answer. Choosing the shorter one is not sitting anything out; it is the day most of the group takes.

What the guides bring is the reason this is not just a walk. Yosemite’s story is written in the rock: the granite formed miles underground, the glaciers that stripped the valley open, the domes cracking off in curved sheets like layers of an onion, the black streaks on the walls that are living algae. By the end of the afternoon the same view from Wednesday reads completely differently.

We come back to the hotel with time to clean up, and dinner is together again, which by Saturday of a week like this is the part of the day people are looking forward to.

Overnight: The Ahwahnee, Yosemite Valley

Highlights

• A naturalist-guided hiking day from The Ahwahnee, with a four-hour route and an eight-hour route leaving the same morning.
• A four-hour route paced for stopping, for the majority of the group, with a guide the whole way.
• An eight-hour route for anyone who hikes regularly and wants a full day on the trail.
• Breakfast at The Ahwahnee before we go, and the group dinner at the hotel when we are back.
• Guides who read the landscape, from the glacial history of the valley to what makes the granite crack the way it does.

Fun Fact: Yosemite gets about ninety-five percent of its precipitation between October and May. Late October sits right at the front edge of that, which is why the air is clear, the light is long and most of the summer traffic is gone.

Day Seven: Down the Mountain to Fresno

A last breakfast in the valley, then the long, pretty road out.

Breakfast together at The Ahwahnee, unhurried, with the granite in the windows one more time. Then we load up and take Highway 41 south out of the park, about two and a half hours down to Fresno with stops along the way wherever the view earns one. The road drops out of the high pines through Wawona and past the South Entrance, and the landscape runs backward through the whole week.

We check into the Fresno airport hotel in the middle of the afternoon, which leaves time to rest before the last dinner. That dinner is the one nobody wants to end. Phone numbers get traded, someone pulls up the photographs, and the group that met at baggage claim on Monday spends its last night together working out who is going where next year.

Overnight: Fresno airport hotel Transfer: Yosemite Valley to Fresno, about 2 hours 30 minutes with stops

Highlights

• A final breakfast at The Ahwahnee, in the Dining Room, before we leave the valley.
• The drive down Highway 41 through Wawona and out the South Entrance, with scenic stops built into the schedule.
• Check-in at the Fresno airport hotel by mid-afternoon, with time to rest before dinner.
• The farewell dinner in Fresno, the whole group, the last night of the week.

Fun Fact: Fresno County produces more agricultural output than any other county in the United States, somewhere near nine billion dollars a year, which is what all those orchards on the drive up were doing.

Day Eight: Home

Monday, October 26

Breakfast at the hotel, goodbyes, and the hotel shuttle to Fresno Yosemite International, which runs throughout the day. Departures can be booked at any hour. Our hostesses see everyone off.

Highlights

• A last breakfast together at the hotel before flights start leaving.
• The airport shuttle from the hotel to Fresno Yosemite International, running all day, so departure times are flexible.