Opinion: Want a better Yosemite experience? Get out of your car and onto a bus

To the editor: My family and I visited Yosemite in June on a day with 40-degree temperatures and rain and hail. Even with such unseasonable weather, we waited for more than an hour in traffic and to find a parking spot so we could actually enjoy the beauty of the park. (“Yosemite struggles to find an answer to traffic woes,” Aug. 11)

How anyone can say, as former Tuolumne County Board of Supervisor Mark Thornten is quoted as saying, that this is “experiencing adventure” is beyond me. I urge anyone who believes, as Thornten says, that “buses are socialism and cars are free choice” to go to Zion National Park and try the much more adventurous and freeing experience of seeing the Zion Valley on a shuttle bus.

Riding the Zion bus, you can take a bike, board and exit at many stops, and spend as much or as little time in any place as you wish. If such a pleasant experience is socialism, count me in.

Julie Tillmann, San Pedro

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To the editor: Yosemite National Park sprawls across 1,169 square miles of mountains, canyons, meadowlands and more. Only a tiny part of this is accessible by roads. Most of it is accessible only to backpackers.

The obvious solution to the severe overcrowding in the tiny Yosemite Valley is to develop more of this enormous park to be accessible to the driving public. The first place to start is the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the adjacent Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne.

Few people realize that the Hetch Hetchy Valley was, prior to 1913, equal in size and beauty to the Yosemite Valley, complete with towering cliffs and high waterfalls. But in 1913, San Francisco was allowed to flood Hetch Hetchy so that it could have access to cheap, reliable, hydroelectric power and water.

San Francisco has enjoyed the benefits of the dam it built for more than 100 years, but now it is time to give the Hetch Hetchy Valley back to the people. San Francisco can have the water; it just has to find another place to store it.

Larry Pearson, Burbank

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To the editor: Thornten, the former Tuolomne County supervisor, believes that “buses are socialism and cars are free choice.”

Why does he squander such an intellect in the wilds of Northern California? He clearly belongs in our nation’s capital, serving as a senior advisor to President Trump.

Bill Canup, Westlake Village

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