Help with Las Vegas to San Fransisco Via Death Valley in late March 2011

[Chunksta]

HI All,
I am hoping someone can help me with a route between Las Vegas and San Francisco, taking in Death valley. We have 2 days (1 overnight along route) to do this in maximum as we have hotel booked in San Francisco on the second night. I wanted to go through Yosemite but as the Tioga pass is likely to be closed i am looking for best senic alternative

Any Help would be much appreciated!!!

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

You are right, Tioga Pass will certainly still be closed, but that's doesn't mean you can't visit Yosemite. The problem is with your time, it will be close to impossible to see both parks. You're talking about 750 miles of driving to see both, which only really leaves a half day to explore once you factor out the drive.

For routing, you're pretty much going to have to go around via Bakersfield. The choice on where to stay really becomes which one park do you want to see. If you want to focus on Death Valley, then you could stay around Ridgecrest and spend most of day 2 on the road. If you want to see Yosemite, you'll need to spend most of that first day on the road, probably staying in Oakhurst, and then seeing the park on day 2.

I'll also say that I personally find "hotel reservations" to be a very poor building block for a trip. Being more than a month away, there should be no reason you can't change your hotel plans so that you have time to see both of these amazing places. If I had to skip one of them, I'd want my reason to be far more important than having to get to a hotel by a certain date.

[glc]

You also have the option to go north on 395 out of Death Valley and cross the Sierras on US-50 or I-80. Check the weather and road conditions before taking this route, there's a slight chance of snow even that late in the season.