When you vacation in Yosemite National Park you are sure to encounter the rugged beauty of the California and the abundance of waterfalls.

When traveling to California for a National Park vacation here are some must-see sights of Yosemite:

Big Trees Tram Tour
Take the Big Trees Tram Tour for a fascinating excursion to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. Share the wonder of this ancient grove as you hear about the history these magnificent trees have seen. Stand in awe of the Grizzly Giant, the oldest tree in the grove, and its many neighbors that tower over 200 feet tall.

Ahwahnee Hotel
Visit the Ahwahnee Hotel, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most distinct resort hotels in North America. Known for its magnificent façade and architecture, the Ahwahnee was specifically designed to highlight its natural surroundings. The destination of queens and presidents alike, you’ll enjoy strolling through the lobby, having afternoon tea, or relaxing with a drink at the bar.

Ansel Adams Gallery
Spend time at the Ansel Adams Gallery. This photographer and environmentalist spent much of his life photographing the beauty of Yosemite. See his works, watch a film about the artist, or participate in a photography workshop or camera walk.

By far the most powerful symbol for Yosemite is Half Dome, the titanic half-egg of granite that presides over the entire valley from its eastern end, and whose sheer, 4700-foot-high face looks like it was sliced by a colossal knife.  For years, even its humped back was thought to be un-climbable – until, in 1875, one of the first settlers in the California region, a retired sailor named George Anderson, decided to tackle it.

He splashed tar over his trousers for adhesion and drove iron bolts into the slope every six feet to make a successful ascent.  On learning of this conquest, the naturalist John Muir “made haste to the Dome,” he wrote many years later in his book The Yosemite, to pull himself up by Anderson’s rope, “not only for the pleasure of climbing, but to see what I might learn.”  In 1919, the Sierra Club set cables on the route, and ever since it has been the signature climb in the park, despite its difficulty for average visitors.  (In 2007, a Japanese tourist slipped and fell 300 feet to his death).

In order to avoid the crowds, climb midweek or later in the day, when the path up Half Dome is all but deserted.  Reaching the top will leave you exhausted but exultant.  From the sheer lip, the sunshine pours like liquid gold into the valley below.  It’s no wonder that Muir raved so: “A grander surface and a grander standpoint… could hardly have been found in all the Sierra,” he recalled, as clouds “of pure pearl luster” swirled miraculously around the valley below his feet.

In a world now filled with high-tech marvels, pure nature can still amaze us – at least, the view from the rim of the Yosemite Valley never fails to elicit cries of glee.  This has always been the case: Back in 1869, a penniless Scottish-born wanderer named John Muir, who had walked 200 miles from San Francisco, first peered down into that yawning expanse and let his own show of delight: “I shouted and gesticulated in a wild burst of ecstasy,” Muir recalled later, upon beholding cliffs “all a-tremble with the thundering tones of falling water.”  With its sheer walls and granite towers “like the spires of Gothic cathedrals,” Yosemite impressed the young Muir deeply, and he swore to explore its every nook and cranny.

He ended up living in the remote valley for several years, surviving on his wits like a Victorian flower child, an experience that eventually led him to become the most famous nature writer of his era and America’s pioneer environmentalist.

Muir took up residence in a rustic log shack over a flowing river in Yosemite, working as a freelance mountain guide, and spending every spare minute climbing  granite mountains.  He would gaze in rapture at its waterfalls, make detailed studies of the delicate forest flowers and fill endless notebooks with observations that exploded with passion for nature.

Within a decade, the “wild man” John Muir was being recognized by American literati as a self-taught genius, and by the end of the century he had become the top spokesman for conservation in the U.S.: His many lyrical books on Yosemite were instrumental in establishing this remote wilderness as a National Park in 1890.

Today, the name of John Muir is emblazoned all over the state of California – it is given to high schools, state forests, hiking trails, parks, roads, even medical centers – but his greatest memorial remains the awe-inspiring landscape of Yosemite itself.

This summer we return to America’s National Parks. During our last National Parks vacation series we traveled to Yellowstone, home of Old Faithful Geyser.  On this trip we will explore the stunning natural wonders of Yosemite National Park.

Join us over the next few weeks as we discover one of the first wilderness parks in the United States.  Yosemite is known not only for its abundance of waterfalls, but also for the striking beauty of nearly vertical granite walls including the famous Half Dome.

Mount Rushmore is one of America’s most iconic vacation destinations.  In April 2009 our travel series took on a National Park vacation.  Here is a reader favorite from our US vacation posts:

The four presidential faces, carved 60-feet high in the granite of Mount Rushmore, comprise one of America’s most revered images.  But many visitors cannot help thinking of Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest, where he and Eva Marie Saint clamber across the monolith pursued by Communist spies.  The shot was actually filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it convinced millions of people that they too could climb the patriotic monument.

This is not the case: Access to Mount Rushmore has been blocked by a high-security fence ever since the artist Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and work on the giant sculpture ceased.  But according to his original plan, Borglum had intended that the public be able to reach his giant faces via a splendid stone staircase.  In the late 1930s, he even began work on a splendid vault buried within the rock for tourists to visit – called the Hall of Records, it was planned as a repository for the original Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  Worried that future generations might find Mount Rushmore as enigmatic, Borglum also wanted a museum to store information on the four presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt – and an explanation of “how the memorial was built and frankly, why.”

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The Teton Range rises sharply from the basin floor and includes eight peaks over 12,000 feet in elevation. This wall of giant mountain peaks runs for over 40 miles. Seven pristine lakes, created by glaciers, run along the base of the range.

Even if you can’t stay overnight, be sure to visit the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone, perhaps the most beloved of all National Park historic accommodations: its soaring, 92-foot lobby, erected in 1904, is a marvelous thatch-work of gnarled and knotted tree trunks, evoking the sensation of being inside the primeval forest of Yellowstone.  Its architect Robert C. Reamer wanted to capture the wild, unruly essence of nature, arguing that the Inn should look as if it actually grew on the spot.  (“I built it in keeping with the place where it stands,” Reamer wrote.  “To try to improve upon it would be an impertinence.”)

Today, the Inn’s older rooms still have their original raw pinewood walls, marble sinks and claw-foot cast-iron baths; on cooler nights, the wind can sometimes whistle through old logs that make up the exterior walls.  In 1959, an earthquake caused some structural damage, and its famous gabled roof is now sadly off-limits to the public – except for two individuals who are permitted to accompany a staff member raising and lowing the flags every dawn and dusk.  (Not surprisingly, the ritual is hugely popular and booked up a year in advance, although it is worth asking at the reservation desk if someone has canceled).  Would-be roof-climbers should be aware that it’s not a trip for those leery of heights.  Starting from the lobby, one ascends a series of rickety old stairs that seem to be suspended in mid-air as they sway underfoot like trapeze ropes.  These pass by the precarious ‘Crow’s Nest’ – a tree-house for adults, where in the early 1900s a small musical ensemble would gather after dinner, to serenade the guests dancing below in formal dress.  But for those lucky few visitors who make the climb, the view from the roof across the steaming fumaroles of the Upper Geyser Basin is magical.

Thanks to HBO, no Western town is as well-known today as Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The series has brought a flood of history-lovers to the real town of Deadwood – an outpost that still has a wild edge, since every saloon and bar has been turned into a lively casino.  In the summer, motorbike enthusiasts cruise the streets like modern-day cowboys.  But was the original Deadwood quite as raunchy and violent at the show depicts?  As with so many dramatic recreations of the Old West, the answer is yes and no.

The basis of the series is absolutely true: In 1874, gold was discovered in the Lakota Indian Reserve, supposedly off-limits by treaty with the United States Congress, and white miners immediately made their way illegally into the area to found the rough-hewn town of Deadwood in its heart.

The first sheriff of Deadwood was indeed named Seth Bullock, as in the series, and there was a Gem Saloon run by a certain Al Swearingen, of whom little is known.  But perhaps the most famous real-life character was the gunslinger Wild Bill Hickock, who arrived in 1876 to try his luck in Deadwood with the notorious Calamity Jane; not long afterwards, a cowardly poker player named Jack McCall walked up behind him in the so-called Number Ten Saloon and shot him in the head.  Hickock usually sat with his back to the wall, but for reasons unknown changed his practice that day; his poker hand of aces and eights is still known as “the dead man’s hand.”  (Today, the event is recreated throughout the summer in Deadwood for enthusiastic tourists inside a saloon that has been rebuilt on the site; the original burned down).

While most other plot lines of the HBO series are fictional, the writer David Milch was trying to depict a broader historical truth about the Old West, where civilization was born from chaos.

See the remarkable Delicate Arch at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.  The forces of nature have created over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, the greatest density of natural arches in the world.  While vacationing at Arches expect to see the colorful collared lizard basking in the sun.

For information about the history of Arches visit the National Park Service website.