Joshua Tree National Park vs Yosemite National Park
Two parks in California. Joshua Tree National Park has 11 tickets and tours to book; Yosemite National Park has 17 tickets and tours to book. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
Joshua Tree is the desert park where the Mojave and the Colorado deserts meet, two and a half hours east of Los Angeles and forty minutes from Palm Springs, and it is a self-drive park with a small tour market around its edges. The day tours from Los Angeles, San Diego and Palm Springs drive the park road from the west entrance to the Cholla garden with stops at Hidden Valley, Keys View and the Skull Rock, with a guide and a picnic, and are the only way in without a car; the private versions can start at dawn or end at dark. The rock-climbing days with the guiding companies of Joshua Tree village are the park's signature activity, since the monzogranite boulders and domes are among the most climbed in the world, and the beginners' sessions need no experience;
Yosemite lies on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, in central California, about four hours by road from San Francisco and six from Los Angeles, and although the park is as large as a small country, the image that the world has of it, the granite cliffs and waterfalls, comes from one valley, eleven kilometres long and barely a kilometre and a half wide, in which nearly all its four million annual visitors gather. A car is the usual means of arrival, by one of three western entrances, from Merced, Oakhurst or Groveland, though public buses connect with the railway at Merced and run in summer over the mountains from Mammoth Lakes; the entrance fee, per vehicle, is valid for seven days, and in recent years a reservation for a timed entry has been required in addition on the busiest summer days and on certain weekends in February, a system that has changed every season and must be checked before travelling.
