>>1029120This. My friends and I used to do this all the time. I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and we used to go to Yosemite for the weekend after work or whatever. It's a few hours drive, so we'd cruise right past the entrance gate around 10 or 11 PM. Sometimes we just pulled into a crowded parking lot and slept next to the car on the ground. This stopped working (rangers rousted us early one morning) so we found the best thing was to park at the Camp Four lot (don't know what it's called now), grab sleeping bags etc and hike up the trail a ways. We found this perfect flat grassy spot slightly above the valley, slept laike babies, woke up to a beautiful sunrise, then packed up and hiked down to the vehicle, and went on whatever hike we had planned, usually up Half Dome (you need a permit for that hike now). The hike took so long that often we'd drive out of the park late, after the entrance station closed, so we didn't have to pay on the way out, either. Ah, the good old days... Late 1970s - early 80s. (I'm 60 now)
