Heaven’s Gate

Planning trip to Yosemite, stay here.
We planned a researched Yosemite for almost a year. From talking to friends who visited, blogs, trip advisor and other sites it was definitely clear that either you camp with the masses in the park, or you decide on the surrounding towns and stay a good 30 minutes from the Park. We went on to several sites when it came to a place to stay and it was difficult to really find a place that seemed convincing because most were not reviewed much. We decided on Heaven’s Gate (yes the same name of that creepy cult that killed themselves) to accommodate us on our family trip for my dads 75^th birthday. The pictures DO NOT give this place justice.
Before you get in and Arrival
We arrived right after another party checked out and the cleaning team was leaving as we arrived a bit early. They left the place spotless and we quickly realized the gem this warm household was going to be during our stay. There is detail in this place, from having all state of the art kitchen goods, to the detail in the bathrooms which are equipped with great jet powered baths and you will even have great quality hair and soap products to go along with the amazing fresh well water that you can drink! The rooms are all really well decorated with clean and good quality linens and each with plenty of drawers, closet space. There are many things to cover here so I will do my best to summarize the biggest pieces for us when we were there.
Food and Local Shops
Oakhurst is a nice sized town with many of your typical fast food, coffee and spots like Jamba Juice. I would recommend you arrive here before you make a stop at the local VONS which is part of a big grocery chain nationwide (i.e in Arizona there is Safeway and they use the same rewards cards, fuel points etc). The pantry has tons of goods to help you prep your meals, there were some perishable items left from previous guest that even we used. There are some jars with flour, sugar, coffee beans (yes coffee beans for the grinder and french press that is available ;) along with many other items that can save you some money in case you are traveling from far or were considering packing. The trip to these place is just 5 – 10 minutes away from the house that is a the top of the valley. If you need to know more talk to Sunday, she helped me learn about this before my trip.
Electronics/​Games and the second house
If you are like me and you want to avoid work and unnecessary emails because you are on vacation. You might not care about the fast speed internet WIFI that is provided free to you. There are two stories to this place and the lower level encompasses a nice big living area with an attached bedroom that is well sized having two queen beds and room for crib for kids (they have a traveler there for your baby). This living area also joins the garage access which is actually a game room with a fooze ball, ping pong, and hockey table. Again good quality too. There is a laundry room down there too if you are traveling for a while and need to do some refreshing. My sister and her family called dibs for this area of the house and it worked out great because it felt like another house within the house. I would caution those with children as the getting up stair from here will require a big stair climb and when at the top you need to make sure to close off this area. Again, the detail of this place is well thought out and Sunday provides you a child fence to make sure your kids can stay safe.
Outside and the BBQ Deck
This place sits at the top of a nice mountain overlooking the valley. It sits in a big property so seeing neighbors or hearing them is not something you will worry about. There seems to be some deer that live on the property because they are right by you, although please don’t feed them. There are several patio’s that you can eat at depending on the year, whether at the front of the house or in the back or downstairs. The BBQ grill is awesome, very high end and it has propane along with the necessary cooking utensils. Sunday has several contacts that can cook for you but we did it ourselves because it was such a great convenience and the costs at the local grocery store were the same as at home plus they have such a huge selection for the international travelers so you will find great foods from all parts of the world.
There has to be room for improvement, not much
In terms of the house believe me I don’t have all the answers but I will say there is not much to work on. The biggest piece for me to share is that if you have kids be warned of the stairs both inside and at the deck outside (see the picture). There is only one child gate available and it has seen it’s better days, so maybe consider replacing it and get another one to make sure kids are safe.

The reviews on tripadvisor or flipkey are misleading because only the good reviews will be posted. The bad reviews can be filtered by the owner (by denying that such person has made reservation). Our stay at Heaven’s Gate was at the end of July 2011. I did not write a review right away because I wanted to let it go, but after one year, I still feel that I need to let the world know what happened and Unilocal is the best place to do it. The house was like advertised; however, the drive to Yosemite was quite long, even though the owner advertised that it is not. Of course every rental property will want to have close proximity to Yosemite to bring up the value. The internet was so slow, you can’t even check your email. If you plan on staying at this place, make sure to add extra money on top of your cost because your deposit might or might not be returned fully. After one week of the stay, we got an email from the owner, Sunday R., listing the damages that she found at the house: queen duvet cover looks like what appears to be a burn mark, and stains (Nobody in our party smokes. When we go to bed, we sleep. Bedrooms were not playroom, so this sounded very fishy to me). Another fishy thing is the damaged window. She said that maybe the kids threw darts from the playroom. The kids were always supervised and were only down in the playroom once or twice. If you have kids, be careful because you could be an easy target. There were a couple more ridiculous accusations from this owner, Sunday R. When you have kids, sometimes accidents might happen, but if you’re being wrongly accused of something that is IMPOSSIBLE, that’s not right and that’s it! She crossed the line. When you pay a lot of money to stay somewhere, you do not plan to be WRONGLY accused of anything. And I think under any circumstances, you NEVER EVER want to be wrongly accused of anything. I am sure you might have a great time staying there. We had a great time staying there (except for the slow internet), but the experience afterward was «more than unpleasant». If I could do it again, I would stay away from this place.