Yosemite during Thanksgiving week...or other locale??

[DonWeston]

Donald Weston , Aug 30, 2010; 10:34 a.m. (edit )

Have checked with google search but no listings for this specific info. Am going to be in California the week leading up to and including the holiday. Have been to Yosemite twice before years ago and wondered what things would be doable this time of the year. I know the Tioga Pass road most likely will be closed by then, which is unfortunately too bad. Will be heading in from San Francisco area and spending at most two to three nights in park.
Another alternative is just stay on coastal areas and go south to Carmel/ Big Sur area for the same 2-3 nights...have been there also, luckily, but lots to shoot and things are always different, right? comments and suggestions would be appreciated. Is my desire to return to Yosemite over shadowing reality of what there is to shoot this time of year, I mean, fall folliage and waterfalls will be gone by Thanksgiving? Correct? Would I just be better doing in the coast and leaving Yosemite for another time of year down the road.
Thanks for all your great advice...best, Don

[Geoff Samuels]

Here's a link to some information about Yosemite that may help you decide: http://www.yosemitefun.com/yosemite_best_time_to_visit.htm  . Both Yosemite and the Central California Coast are gorgeous so I can't say that one would be better than the other.

[DonWeston]

It sounds like a better bet this trip will be coastal then inland and Yosemite......

Oh well will have to plan another trip another time of yr....

As much as one could be lucky with weather, just no enough to push me to when odds are against it. Part of the magic is the waterfalls and Tioga Pass road areas. Will start planning ideas for Carmel and Big Sur instead. Anyone have specific areas that should never be missed here...??

[Geoff Samuels]

I have a couple of suggestions that you could consider. First of all there's Point Lobos State Preserve just south of Carmel - there's lots of places to photograph the surf meeting the shore (Ansel Adams and Edward Weston liked it) but the downside is restricted hours so you won't be able to photograph early morning or late sunset. The terrace at the Nepenthe resort further down the coast has some good vistas of the shore. About
40 miles south of Carmel is Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park which has McWay Falls, much photographed but still interesting to see. A really
interesting place is Partington Cove: it's two miles north of McWay Falls. There's no signs but there is parking off Cabrillo Hwy (I looked up
Google, the lat and long of the parking is: 36.176N, 121.693W). There's a steep trail that drops down about 280 feet to the coast where you enter
a 100 foot tunnel to the actual cove. I'm going to try to attach a couple of snapshots of McWay Falls and Partington Cove to give you an idea of what to expect. Hope this helps.

[Canon5D_]

Don: I'd also suggest the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes near Pismo Beach.  http://www.dunescenter.org/

Rather than access the dunes at the entrance station there's a campground nearby that you can park in and have immediate access to the dunes.  This is the best way to avoid all the other shutterbugs.

[dreed]

In a general sense, this web page is ok...

But I would use it in the same sense as "go to the shopping mall to buy a bag."

Why?

The snowfall makes a huge difference on the calendar for shooting. Whether it is light, heavy, late or early. All of those can mean that parks of the park may not open until quite late. For example, this year the chains did not go up on Half Dome until June.

Perhaps the most important thing to realise is that for Yosemite, when to be there really revolves around how much snow has fallen and when it is melting. To use this year as an example, there was one weekend when the water level of the Merced River crested at the bottom end of the flood limit. If you were there on that Saturday and Sunday, you would have found much of the valley below Sentinel Bridge and between the north/south roads to be a very still lake.

My recommendation for this time of year in California is the Pacific Coast. Some of the best shots I have of sunset from the Pacific Coast are from late in November because the fog and all that warm, moist, air is gone. Pigeon Point lighthouse can be a good challenge to shoot well - on more than one occasion I've seen other folks rock up with their white lenses at around sunset.