Hodgdon Meadow Campground — Hotel in Sonora

Normally I'm not fussy about campsites as I camp on BLM amd backpack a lot. For me campings are a welcome upgrade from time to time. Made an exception for this 4 day trip in Yosemite. Sadly I shouldn't have. I found there wasn't much respect from the camp host and from the other campers.

Our spot was okay. The campsite is about 45min from the Valley, there is one trail that leaves from the campground and lots of other trailheads between the campground and the Valley. At this time, the Valley is under heavy construction and this campground was a much better (we thought) for a quieter and less dusty place.

Of the site we were given, we were able to find one flat place from that little hill where 7-6 sites were crammed. When we arrived, as we were setting up, kids were running everywhere, including in the street. Fair there aren't many passing vehicles, but there were some close calls. Anyone was passing through our campsite. We would be eating outside or in our tent and people passed from mere feet of tents and picnic tables where others were sometimes eating. Even saw kids running under a guy's sun roof that he had set up outside his RV. Pretty invasive and not much respect for other people's campsite. I've never seen anything like this in 20 years of camping.

Also seems like there were so many dogs. At any time there would be barking, some very agressive barking too, throughout the campsite, even outside quiet hours. I understand dogs are animals, but they shouldn't be allowed if they can't be restrained from threatening and barking at people and other dogs passing by.

Not much respect for quiet hours either (7am-10pm). Every morning at 6am people could be heard talking loudly to each other and sometimes yelling, waking us up by walking right next to our tent... People would respect the generator use hours, which was good.

In the bathroom there is an obvious sign telling you to "not wash dishes in sink. Use outside sink". That was never respected. Had to do the line a few times to wash my hands or brush my teeth as people were cleaning their dishes. The bathrooms were gross. Toilet paper all over the place, half flushed, food parts in the sinks. Felt like the host never cleaned them the whole time we were there. Also there are no showers. Only ones we knew of were in the Valley, and they charged an outrageous $5 per person for access (I've seen $1-2 but never that high). No outside faucet for drinking water, even though the map said there is one (water from the tap of the bathroom maybe? There was no indication).

Overall I'm pretty bitter about this experience and I am even more disappointed by how NPS runs this place (or doesn't). There needs to be some leveling done for the tent only campsites, rules to be respected, some teaching about respecting other campers, and some cleaning of bathrooms. Too bad because it could be a...

Stayed at site #46. It was a hike in which not too bad imagine just walking from the front door to your house to your neighbor across the streets garage. Probably the closest hike in spot I’ve stayed in. All the sites were basically on top of each other. We stayed from mid oct ‘24 for 2 nights, Sat-mon. It was fairly busy and noisy saturday night. Sunday night we only had one neighbor. It looked like it cleared out despite it saying the whole campground was fully booked up. Bear lockers were very large. It fit our 65 qt and 48 qt cooler + 22 inch black stone with extra room to spare for all our other scented items. We did see the camp rangers walk around in the morning to make sure nothing was left out and locked in the bear lockers. There are a ton of bees in the day time especially while cooking. The ground isn’t very level so we had to kind of position our tent on the “flattest” part of our campsite. I did feel the slight angle that we had to sleep on which wasn’t too uncomfortable. We just made sure our heads were at the top of the slope. Didn’t love this site because of how close everyone was to us, you could hear everyone’s conversation. I’d suggest camping during the week for this site. This site was actually nice because it was far back that nobody really walks through your campsite. If you can, I would avoid the middle campsites by the bathrooms. I can only imagine all the people walking in and out of your campsite. There’s not really a real path to get to the bathroom. Bathrooms were clean for the most part with flushable toilets. It was surprisingly not as cold as we thought it would be since we were at the lower point of Yosemite -our thermometer read at 33 degrees at around 7am. It was much colder when we were up by general Sherman’s tree. This is a good site to camp in the winter, I think summer would be terrible...

Hodgdon Meadows doesn’t have offer some of the basic benefits of your ordinary campground experience.||1) Campsite 55 (though a generally common complaint at hodgdon) was NOT level at all. It seems to be a hillside campground, so when you lie down in your tent you start to roll. Our table was in poor condition and VERY badly sloped to the point where vegetables rolled off multiple times.||2) The ground is purely dirt—no grass or ground vegetation whatsoever. We have never stayed at a campsite that kicked up clouds of dust like this one. Did they find the lowest quality ground cover 50 minutes from the park and decide this was the best campsite? Idk but this was a very annoying.||3) My partner and I have camped many times at many parks, and every other tent site situation is private with your OWN PARKING SPACE. For some reason though, the designers of this campsite decided to get creative and arrange campsites that condense a dozen plus parking spots next to each other to squeeze campsites next to each other. It made no sense and was INCONVENIENT. Camping became such a public experience at that point. Other campers walking through your “campsite” to get to the bathroom…it was ridiculous.||4) Speaking of bathrooms, there simply aren’t enough stalls and urinals to accommodate the nightly volume of campers Hodgdon receives. Waiting to use the bathroom in the morning was inconvenient.||TLDR: The campground is in poor condition at the moment. In order to make this location comfortable, serious landscaping renovations must be done or else they should close it permanently. It could be the worst campground experience for us to date. Strongly suggest a campground closer to...