Cherry Lake Dispersed Camping

Heading northwest from Yosemite towards Tahoe

We left Yosemite National Park on the Friday afternoon of Memorial weekend with a plan to do more dispersed camping on our way towards Lake Tahoe, mainly in order to avoid the big parks and campgrounds over the busy holiday weekend.

Soaking up our final moments in Yosemite.

Since we weren’t able to drag ourselves away from our sunny beach-day spot on the Merced River in Yosemite until around 4pm, we ended up driving just a short 90 minutes north out of the park and into the Stanislaus National Forest to find a spot.

When I searched for a link for Stanislaus, I discovered that the U.S. Forest Service webpage heading for the area reads — “feed your soul, cultivate wonder” — which feels like a fitting tagline for this entire trip so far.

After our very first campsite of the trip at the “Edge of the World” near Sedona, AZ it was fun to check off the “Rim of the World,” too (video below from this overlook point).

Taylor used his trusty Gaia and OnX off-road/GPS apps to find a dispersed camping area near Cherry Lake — a large artificial lake formed by the Cherry Valley Dam and located at 4,700 ft elevation. This area is also near Hetch Hetchy, which is considered a sort of backcountry access route to Yosemite.

Getting there required over an hour of rough off-roading, winding up the steepest and sharpest switch-backs I’ve ever encountered.

This screenshot doesn’t do the route justice, as we climbed a peak, dropped to the base of the gorge below, then climbed the next peak to reach our campsite.

Along the way we reminisced about our previous anxiety-fueled drive on Maui’s Road to Hāna, which famously boasts over 600 curves and 59 one-way stretches and bridges. Somehow, this hour-long drive was more stressful — with a rutted-out dirt road at most eight feet wide, sheer drop-offs of thousands of feet, and blind curves every 15 feet or so.

Thankfully we only encountered a few other trucks on the drive and I climbed out of the driver’s seat at the end with white knuckles, stiff shoulder/neck muscles, and a strong desire to stay put for at least a night or two.

Our dispersed campsite (i.e. any spot off a forest road where it’s legal to camp up to 14 days) overlooking Cherry Lake.

We did just that, setting up the rooftop tent for two nights and spending the full day in between lazily reading under our truck awning with camp mugs full of wine, hiking down to Cherry Lake, and using our camp shower to rinse off after our dusty hike.

A reminder of what our camp shower set-up looks like, as we first tested it out in Scottsdale.

(Side note: the camp shower worked GREAT, with water warmed by the sun in the black truck-mounted tank and quickly pressurized using our portable tire air compressor. It felt SO good to be able to rinse the dust and sunscreen off.)

From our dispersed campsite, we hiked about a quarter mile down a forest service road to the Cherry Valley Dam.

Views from hiking around (and dipping a toe in the very cold) Cherry Lake.

It was two slightly dodgy nights of sleep at this site, being our first stay in “bear country” without dedicated bear boxes and keeping all our food and “fragrant items” in the back of the truck…right below our tent. However, we confirmed that the precautions that we’ve been taking are best practice and learned that the likelihood of bear encounters in dispersed areas is much lower than at an established campground, where black bears are habituated to expect easy food.

We still slept with the bear spray with us in the tent, along with our car keys (figuring that we could hit the alarm button to scare off a nearby bear if it wandered by) and did jolt awake at a few noises during the night. One groggy awakening right before dawn revealed a lone deer, strolling about eight feet away from the truck; I think the two of us were equally surprised to make eye contact in the early morning light.

We’ve kept this close at hand at our dispersed camp sites.

From Cherry Lake, we made our way to Sonora, CA for a little restock/refuel stop. We found a coin-operated laundry that had free wifi, used the change machine to obtain exactly 44 quarters ($11), and sat planning out our next few days of camping options while we washed basically everything we’d brought with us: all our clothes, our sheets, camp towels, and hiking boot insoles.

Taylor doing his “clean laundry” happy dance.

With our clean laundry in tow, we cruised slowly through the main street area of Sonora and fell in love with the quaint old mining town packed with tiny coffee shops, art boutiques, and lots of ethnic restaurants.

Hungry for a late lunch, we stumbled on an excellent tap room and outdoor patio at The Armory and soaked up the sunshine with a local IPA and hibiscus margarita, as well as some delicious eats.

We’ve been eating well on the trail, but this hot fried chicken sammie and pork nachos really hit the spot.

From Sonora, we’ll continue northwest toward the Tahoe area and can’t wait to share more pictures and stories from the road. We so appreciate those who are following along and sending their well wishes our way.