Buck Meadows, California

Location:  13 miles (21 km) from Yosemite entrance; 25 miles (40 km) from Yosemite Valley; via Highway 120 (map)

Population 50; Elevation 3,000 feet (915 meters)

How many buildings does a clearing in the woods need to have before it can get its own city name? The answer, as anyone in Buck Meadows can tell you: four. One of them is an America's Best Value Inn.

Shopping & Amenities:  Actually, the previous paragraph sells Buck Meadows short. Besides the Best Value Inn (also known as the Yosemite Gateway Lodge), there's also a restaurant, a small general store, and a gas station. There are other lodging options, too - another motel, a lodge renting cabins, and a bed & breakfast. And there are more hotels scattered between Buck Meadows and the Yosemite entrance, including the Yosemite Riverside Inn on the Cherry Lake Road, and the Yosemite Pines Resort, the only place in the Yosemite area where you can sleep in a yurt.

Pro:  Peace and quiet. There are probably more people in any particular Yosemite campground than there are in Buck Meadows.

Con:  Contrary to its name, there are no meadows in sight here. This is clearly a failure of imagination. If you're going to name your city after something that's not there, why settle for a meadow, which lots of other places have plainly already got? Why not call it "Buck Rogers' Bloody Crash Landing Site" or "Buck Naked Mermaids From the Watery Deep?" These are the names of places I would make a point of visiting. This error is probably why Buck Meadows remains such a modest size after so many years.