Vintage travel trailers and safari-style “glamping” tents are growing in popularity for people who love the outdoors but love their creature comforts, too. It’s a mix that can work especially well for corporate retreats, providing a serene, distraction-free backdrop for brainstorming and team-building.
For planners seeking a setting in the wilderness, AutoCamp Yosemite, three hours from San Francisco and 32 miles from the El Portal entrance to Yosemite National Park, fits the bill on several levels. This newest and largest of three AutoCamp Airstream Parks (the others are in Santa Barbara and Sonoma County) hosts guests in 80 custom-made Airstream trailers decorated in a variety of styles. All include queen beds with memory foam mattresses, kitchenettes, private bathrooms, patios and fire pits. Fourteen luxuriously furnished “glamping” tents (available April-October) and a string of hard-side cabins, some of them wheelchair accessible, round out the accommodation options on a 35-acre property that includes communal fire pits and lounge areas, shower facilities, a heated swimming pool and hot tub, a shop carrying meal kits as well as merchandise, and a bar catering to modern tastes with craft beer, kombucha, cold-brew coffee and the like.
A highlight on the meeting front is a recently completed, 4,000-square-foot, two-story clubhouse with an upper level that can be rented separately for groups. It opens onto a private terrace ideal for meetings that flow between business, cocktails and dinner. AutoCamp has partnered with the area’s Moonrise Kitchen to provide catering services for group events.
Elsewhere on the property, guests can enjoy complimentary mountain-bike rentals, yoga sessions and campfire programs. Working with REI Experiences, the property can provide a menu of six interpretive day hikes ranging from easy strolls on the Yosemite Valley floor to strenuous treks up to Cathedral Lakes. Amenities like these led Time Magazine to name AutoCamp Yosemite one of the 100 “World’s Greatest Places” to visit in 2019. Bonus for those who wouldn’t want their furry friends to miss out on the experience: AutoCamp Yosemite is dog-friendly.
