San Francisco to El Portal

This morning we didn’t set an alarm to wake up to. Scott woke me up at around 9am and we both realised we had slept in quite late. We had breakfast and packed up our items and checked out of the accomodation around 10:30am. We stopped by Starbucks and both got a coffee each, before deciding to grab an iced coffee on the way to Yosemite National Park.

The drive was a bit over 4 hours, and we also wanted to stop in a town a bit closer to Yosemite to complete some shopping. We got onto the freeway and headed towards San Francisco before crossing over a bridge towards the mountains. The views over the bay were beautiful, and thankfully it was a nice sunny day.

After about 2 hours of driving we stopped in Manteca for a break and went to Walmart to complete our shopping for the week. Scott also wanted to buy a hat that covered his face but they only sold women’s hats. Once we had stocked up on all our food items we headed back on the freeway towards Yosemite.

Once we left the freeway and started driving on Highway 140 the landscape changed dramatically to a very dry area and hills in the distance. We drove through a lot of farming area before we started climbing up and over the foothills of the mountains.

After a full day of driving we finally arrived at our accomodation in El Portal just outside Yosemite National Park at 6pm. We walked along the river before having salads for dinner and having an early night. We set our alarms for 5am to ensure we were ready for our first day of hiking.Read more