Camping At Yosemite National Park

Become a Junior Ranger or Little Cub. In 2009, more than 27,000 children became Yosemite Junior Rangers (with 15,000 in 2008 and 6,000 in 2007). The 2009 increase is due to an increase in daily Junior Ranger programs, given by the park’s summer interpretive rangers, supported by a Yosemite Fund project. Find an online schedule of interpretive programs, including special Junior Ranger programs, in the Yosemite Guide newspaper (get your copy on the right hand side of this page).

Be a Junior Ranger (ages 7-13)!
You can become a Yosemite Junior Ranger by purchasing a self-guided booklet published by the Yosemite Conservancy. This booklet is sold for $3.50 plus tax at the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center , , , Nature Center at Happy Isles (May through September), and Wawona and Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Centers (June through September), and Big Oak Flat Information Station (May through September). In order to earn a Junior Ranger patch, the booklet must be completed, a bag of trash collected, and a guided program attended.

Be a Little Cub (ages 3-6)!
Yosemite has a program for YOU! Little Cubs is a self-guided booklet that encourages our young visitors and their families to discover Yosemite ’s wonders and to earn a Little Cubs button.This booklet (published by the Yosemite Conservancy) is sold for $3 plus tax in the Nature Center at Happy Isles ,Yosemite Valley, Wawona, and Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Centers, and the Big Oak Flat Information Station.

The Information in this article was provided by the National Park Service. Learn More about Yosemite's Junior Ranger Program at the National Park Service Website at

http://www.nps.gov/yose/forkids/beajuniorranger.htm

My daughter became a Little Cub in 2009 (as pictured above) and still to this day (2011) she talks about it. The program had just the right amount of activities to keep us going and could be completed as you spend your time doing all of the Yosemite things that you do while you are here. Our adventure came to a mad scramble as on the last day of our trip, we were getting ready to have a slice of pizza at the pizza patio at Curry Village and realized that the Ranger station in Yosemite Village was closing in about a half an hour. We left our friends to eat the pizza while we attempted to fight the traffic from Curry Village to Yosemite Village on a late Sunday afternoon. Murphy's law had kicked in as the drive was painfully slow so we decided to park at the main visitor parking area (Shuttle Stop 1) and took off on foot. Now, I am not in the best of shape and we had to run from the parking area to the Visitor Center and with just a couple minutes to spare, and me huffing it as we entered the Visitor Center, had a ranger ask several questions about the program to make sure she did everything on her workbook and swear my daughter in as a little cub. I will say that it was a great father/daughter experience and something that you should definitely plan to when you visit Yosemite. Just make sure that you plan for traffic that can back up late in the evening on the weekends.