Hi Dugz,

To be honest, I would stay overnight in San Fran - great city, and drive down to Yosemite the next day, it's not that bad a drive. Tahoe is back up to the north from Yosemite.
Bear in mind that this time of year it might only be the main entrance to Yosemite that is open (on the west side). I drove up from Vegas in early May and all the passes on the east side were closed because of snow! I'm not sure if they've had snow yet at this time of year.

Cheers,

TC

It's not that far. We drove from Merced (which is close by Yosemite) to SF in one day and managed a stop and a couple of hours break in Carmel on the way.

That's rather impressive given that you'd have to go out of your way to get to Carmel when going from Merced to SF! My wife is from Merced... her grandmother still lives there. A nice enough town but it gets a lot of fog!

We only went to Carmel because it was highly recommended by an American couple who we met at the hotel in Merced. Agreed it was a fair drive but doable. We got to the hotel in SF in the early evening having left Merced after breakfast.

Just find a Country Station on the radio and drive.