Yosemite

After the Big Sur we headed inland across the coastal mountain range, across flat plains then back into mountains. It was amazing to see the dramatic landscape changes. One minutes it would be lush green rolling hills then the next barren grey foothills. We arrived at the Yosemite Bug early enough to get some washing done and cook dinner. Clean clothes are sooooo exciting when your living out of a back pack. Our dorm was looking quite festive with our clothes lines being a rainbow of clean undies. We were in a twelve bed dorm and had though we were incredibily lucky having only 6 people in it, but then sure enough a bus arrived along with a very vocal snorer. I didn't sleep very when that night. ):
We drove one of the guys we met at the dorm, Ray, into the park. He was a texan, who had previously spent 3 weeks in the park and had only been into town to pick up supplies before spending another month on the trails. He had a lot to say and gave us a few handy pointers as to what to see.
Ray took us to bridal veil falls, a short walk to a water fall, where you get soaked from the viewing platform, and then up to tunnel view, which gave us an overview of the Yosemite Valley. We then dropped him in town and parked the car. The shuttle bus is the best way to get around the valley.
We spent the rest of the day on a hike up the Mist trail (because the mist from the falls soaks you again), to Vernal Falls and then on up to Nevada Falls. Along the way we met 2 college girls doing a big road trip, they had just graduated. The hike took most of the afternoon and gave awesome views of the two massive waterfalls and back through the valley.





The drive back to the accomodation took about an hour where we had leftovers for dinner, nice and simple.
The dorm had a guy from Japan who was in the area for a week just doing hikes, and Jessica and her friend - blonde sweedish girls who were also pretty friendly.
Second day in the park we were pretty tired after a poor first night sleep and a long day of hiking. We had hoped to climb Yosemite falls, another 5-6 hour walk.
We started with a short walk to Mirror lake which had reflective views of the surrounding snow capped mountains. Instead of then starting the big hike we went to the Awahee Hotel, a rather fancy place and had coffees.





We did do the lower Yosemite falls walk, which only takes about an hour. Christine checked out the gift shop and we bought some beer and snacks. Our last stop for the day was Glacier point and then a walk to Sentinal Dome where we sat and watched Sunset with 360 deg views of the valley. It was quite amazing how high up we were, the view dwarfed the falls which we had spent hours climbing the day before.
Suprisingly there were only a handful of people at the lookout for sunset, possibly something to do with the mile walk back to the car in the dark!