MSN: “Where to Stay For Your Family-Friendly Yosemite Trip”

Sierra Sky Ranch got named as one of the writer’s favorite hotel recommendations for that itinerary — something with real character, not another chain off the highway. That distinction is worth sitting with for a second, because it’s the exact case we’d make ourselves: the Fairfield Inn and the Holiday Inn Express in Oakhurst are closer to Highway 41 and probably close on price. What they can’t do is put you in a building that’s been standing since the 1870s.

Here’s what’s actually here. Thirty acres in Oakhurst, 12 miles from Yosemite’s South Entrance — close enough for the southern-loop itinerary the article is built around. Twenty-eight rooms split between the Ranch House and the Guest House. A Great Room with stone fireplaces, and French doors opening from most rooms onto the wraparound veranda. A library at the end of the hall. A fire pit that comes alive most evenings, with S’mores kits at the front desk. Wild turkeys most mornings, deer most evenings, on the Great Lawn — not staged, just the actual wildlife that shows up.

For the itinerary itself: this is the property to land at after a day around Mariposa Grove or Glacier Point. Highway 41 runs straight from the property to the South Entrance — about 20 minutes — and Mariposa Grove is another 20 past the gate. Come back in the evening to the veranda and the fire pit instead of a standard box hotel with parking lot views.

We’re not the closest hotel to the gate — a few properties in Fish Camp beat us by a matter of miles. What we’d argue we offer instead is what got noticed in this write-up: a place with an actual history and a personality, in a location built for exactly the kind of weekend this MSN article “Where to Stay For Your Family-Friendly Yosemite Trip” is describing.