Yosemite and bushwacked

Arrived back in Yosemite Valley this arvo - met some bears and mozzies on our 4 day hike! will write more from San Fran.

Time for an update now that we have a chance to breathe – turned out our itinerary was pretty full on! Alex treated our hikes as a bit of an Adventure Race!

Yosemite was our final stop in our tour of National Parks. The flowering meadows and large outcrops of rock were very beautiful. By this stage we had our hiking gear tailored to just what we needed, and we were wise about the weight of the bear canisters so we cut down to just one between us, which also meant cutting down on food as you have to be sure that all your food and smellies (toothpaste, sunscreen etc) will fit in there on your first night out so the bears don't get it. Our first bear encounter occurred at our campsite in Yosemite Valley before we started the hike. Some poor hiker sleeping on a picnic table woke to a bear in his face and he didn't even make a noise! It was left up to his tent neighbour to scare the bear away before he ate him.



We caught a bus up to Glacier Point which overlooks Yosemite Valley and famous Half Dome. The very friendly bus driver told us all about the history, animals and plants along the way, I'm sure she didn't stop talking for the whole 2 hour drive! Did you know that female bears have their babies while they're hibernating? Yup, they wake up and wha la, they have a baby to look afer – I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not! Also California black bears are more blonde in colour and are reportedly the smartest black bears in the states.

Our packs were a little lighter this time, although we realised that we'd miscalculated our pop tart breakfasts meaning we were 2 muesli bars down per day. But thanks to the people who left 3 snickers bars in a bear box at our campsite on the first night, we didn't starve on the trip although we were both pretty hungry as we had to be careful with our 'rations' of snickers and Clif bars (really yummy American energy bars which taste a million times better than Powerbars).

There was a steady stream of day hikers on their way to Half Dome, and we could see a continuous line of black dots up the side of it. We decided to head up in the late afternoon, the first section through lovely pine forest, and then a steep zigzag path up the subdome. The cables heading up the main dome to the top were very imposing. I wasn't expecting the 'climb' to be so full on as the people we'd seen coming back down didn't look that prepared. Anyway, we started up them using some old gloves left at the bottom. It was a matter of gripping two cables on either side of you, then trusting your shoes when walking up the rock. It got to a 50-60 degree angle so it felt pretty hairy at times! Alex reckons it was about an S or HS slab rock climb without the cables. The top was magnificent though, and even more so since we had it to ourselves! Our decision to summit late in the day had paid off, apparently sometimes there is a 30 minute wait at the bottom of the cables and passing people coming in the opposite direction must be tricky.



We had mammoth walking days after that, hiking up Clouds Rest which is higher than Half Dome, with our full packs one day, then a long day hike (16 miles) over Vogelsang Pass. The granite rock is very hard so it hasn't worn away and there are waterfalls that go down for hundreds of metres on the sloping rock – we thought it would be awesome to go down them on a tube!






Our second (proper) bear encounter happened up near Merced Lake. Alex came across a bear walking towards him along the path. He made noises and waved his sticks around, but the bear just looked at him, then continued walking towards him! He freaked out and called me for some back up. We stood next to each other, waved our arms and sang 'the wheels on the bus go round and round' (a song we had talked about earlier as a good one to use in this sort of situation). It worked and the bear slinked off.



Our hiking finished with a couple of large American meals back in Yosemite Valley, before driving through to San Fran for some city life.

We dropped our car in a dodgy looking valet parking place as driving in the city was a bit of a nightmare. Alex showed me all the sights on his own tourist walking tour, I hadn't realised how steep the streets are! We had a ride on one of the cable cars that still run up and down the steeper streets. They seem to be packed with tourists hanging out the sides of the cars all day. We hired some old bikes the second day and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge to a cool seaside town of Sausolito then on to Tiburon to catch a ferry back to SF. My bike got a flat about half way into the ride, so we had to go for it to get as far as we could before it went flat! It was hot so I wasn't keen on walking the bike.

We ate very well in SF. One night, we met up with Alex's friend Lisa and visited an old pub (the Edinburgh Castle) Alex used to frequent when he lived there (it looked really dodgy from the outside, but was like a proper English pub inside). We also met up with Jon (ex-Bristol crew) for a beaut alfresco meal. Our final night we treated ourselves to a meal at the famous Stinking Rose - 'we serve food with our garlic'. Yes, a garlic restaurant. It was awesome, really well decorated with garlic braids everywhere, apparently they go through 1500kg of garlic each month! We had to have their famous bagna calda, their version of garlic bread. It consisted of about 50 garlic cloves which have been cooked for ages, and a mountain of bread rolls. The cloves are so soft you can literally spread them on the bread – yum, we polished the whole thing – that is about 25 cloves each. I'm sure we must have stunk for a couple of days afterwards!

For our final couple of days in the States we planned on doing the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur back to LA. We camped the first night just before Big Sur and planned to drive through and maybe do a short walk the next day before staying in a motel for our final night. In the tent that night Alex was writing in the journal and asked what the date was. Hang on a minute, when was our flight? I quickly ran back to the car which was parked about half a mile from our tent, and oops, we'd mixed up our days/dates and our flight was the very next day! And we were still more than 300 miles from LA. We spent the evening working out that we'd have to start driving at 4am in the morning to be sure to get to the airport on time. Lets just say it was a very long day and we didn't see much of Big Sur or the coast road, but at least we made our flight and here we are in the UK summer – nope, its been drizzling since we got here!