Touring * Street *

From Groveland, follow Highway 120 (Tioga Pass Road) east to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. Pay the $20 entrance fee (good for the next seven days at any National Park, as long as you save your receipt). At the Crane Flat area, continue straight ahead to bypass the Tioga Pass turnoff and continue another 10 miles to the Yosemite Valley via New Big Oak Flat Road. Pass through the valley floor for another five miles on the one-way road that passes Housekeeping Camp and Curry Village. Just past Curry Village, go straight at the four-way intersection to park in the Curry Village lot on the right. Your route starts on the bike path that runs along the street you just drove in on, heading east.

The Upper Pines loop is a wide, slightly sloped road where cars are excluded, but bicycles, shuttle buses, and skaters are allowed. As you leave Curry Village behind, you'll pass through one of those fantastic Yosemite meadows that offers views of sheer granite walls graced with splashing, thundering cascades of snow melt. The road curves east into the trees, passing an intersection near Upper Pines campground. Continue straight ahead into the woods. (If you want, you can follow a nearby bike lane through the trees instead, but why bother when there's that wonderful wide road?)

Half a mile beyond the intersection, you come to the Happy Isles Nature Center, located at the trailhead for the Vernal and Nevada Falls and Half Dome hikes. If you have a skate carrier, sturdy shoes, and a day pack, it's entirely feasible, and even desirable, to skate to the trailhead, swap skate gear for shoes, and hike up to Vernal Falls and back (less than four miles round-trip) before continuing around the loop. The wide asphalt sidewalk from the road up to the Nature Center is smooth and, in between shuttle buses, empty enough for some short but fun "roll-bys." There are two possible paths for this purpose; the one on the south side (behind the busy rest rooms) is less crowded and has just enough slope to allow you to pick up some speed. Stay alert near the merging bike path on the left as you approach the loop road.

Leaving Happy Isles, go right to continue around the loop. Half a mile up the forested road and around a bend, you'll come to the intersection with the Mirror Lake Road route (Link below). Stay to the left to skate past the stables and across the bridge on the only section of road open to cars; that returns you to the Upper Pines intersection described above. Turn right there to return to the Curry Village parking lot.

• Mirror Lake Road
• Yosemite Falls to Curry Village