It’s so lovely to be back in contact with the world!

The Beast 2

Today was a driving day.  It occurs to me that I haven’t posted a photo of our new chariot, ‘the beast 2’ so here it is! This one’s a little smaller and only seats five people!!

We left our fabulous B&B and the lovely people we met there and are now ensconced in Mount Shasta.  The weather’s a bit of a shock, at the moment it’s cooler and cloudy.  We had some rain on the way here but only a cupful.  We have come to the conclusion that we have probably seen the last of the very hot weather and plan on getting our jeans out tomorrow.  Hey ho!

Lake Shastina

Northern California seems to be the home of fruit growing.  We passed through miles and miles of fruit trees, nut trees and acres and acres of sunflowers.  Then it turned mountainous and very green with lots of fir trees. I was taking photos as we travelled but this is about the best one, a view of Lake Shastina (not bad for being taken through the car window).

Tomorrow we explore the Mount Shasta area.

PS: For those taking an interest in Si’s eating habits, tonight he had a beef short rib ……….. he said it was fabulous.  I should have taken a picture of the look of pleasure on his face!!!!

Well today was interesting!! We decided to do a small hike, just a two-mile round trip that should have taken 1.5 hours!! Being the Brits that we are we set off about 11.30 a.m. just in time for the hot midday sun. The lady at the Information Centre told us to take plenty of water and at the time we thought that as the hike was only going to take a short amount of time so the water we were carrying would be plenty. How wrong can two people be!!

The rock before the hike! That’s me trying to stop it from rolling any further!!

The hike we were going to do was the Upper Yosemite Fall Trail to Columbia Rock with an elevation of 1,000 feet above the valley floor, so in total about 5,000 feet above sea level.

The summary of the hike was that Columbia Rock is a massive granite rock jutting from the north canyon wall a thousand feet above Yosemite Valley with the rail-lined overlook atop the 5,031-foot rock offering a distance and detailed view of the valley. The hike follows the first steep mile of the Upper Yosemite Fall Trail – with the aid of 60 switchbacks – through oak and manzanita groves. The trail was built in the 1870s by John Conway and his crew.

Not even a quarter of the way yet!

Upper Yosemite Falls – this is where we should have turned round!!

Help! I’m exhausted.

Upper Yosemite Falls – I’m feeling a lot better now!

Upper Yosemite Falls and Half Dome

So, we set off at a steady pace in the sunshine.  Yesterday was a lovely day but cool so we expected today would be much the same but no, it’s been much hotter. The path we were on first of all was gritty sand and the incline rose slowly.  We stopped at various points to admire the view, take photos and refresh ourselves.  However, it became apparent after about two hours that we had gone wrong somewhere!! We soon found ourselves climbing over fallen rocks and up very steep inclines.  One man told us we had about another 15 minutes to walk until we reached the end of the hike and then another told us it was at least an hour. By now we were starting to feel rather tired and our water was running low.  Every time we turned a bend we were confronted with more steep slopes to climb and fallen rocks. To cut a very long hike (story) short, we consulted our hiking book again and soon realised that we had already reached our destination about an hour earlier and should have turned back then!!

Are we stupid or what! I told Si it was all his fault of course as he was the one who picked the hike in the first place and he should have realised sooner that we had been hiking for far too long.  Us ladies know that it’s always the man’s fault, not the lady’s!!!!

We were in fact now doing the 7.2 miles round trip that takes six hours to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Point.  This is usually undertaken by the more experienced climbers, not just us hikers.  We decided the best thing to do was turn around and start the long decent.  Well, as is usually the way, the decent was worse than the ascent.  The rocks were slippery and the sand very difficult to walk on.  Good exercise for the legs though and the views were magnificent!

In the end the ‘small’ hike took us 5.5 hours and we covered seven miles and were at an elevation of about 6,500 feet above sea level.

The snake – anyone know which snake this is?

We saw a snake on our travels and a blue-jay seemed to follow us all the way up and down the hike, every so often it appeared that he was laughing at us.

We hadn’t eaten anything substantial since breakfast so were very tired, dirty and hungry when we returned to the B&B and didn’t feel like going out to dinner but the day was saved when Scelestia here at the B&B kindly offered to share their wonderful family dinner of lasagne, salad and wine with us. It was like manna from Heaven!!

Our B&B – Yosemite Rose

Tomorrow (Sunday) we leave Yosemite and move on to Mount Shasta in Northern California and there hopefully, we’ll be able to update the blog for the past three days.

Where’s BT Infinity when we need it!! Still can’t post to the blog so am typing this for when normal service is resumed.  Hopefully on Sunday (and here we are!)

Bridal Veil Falls

Cathedral Rock

We spent Friday enjoying the wonder that is Yosemite National Park. There are many magnificent things to see and photograph and we captured a few of them.

Yosemite covers an area of 761,268 acres and is visited each year by over 3.7 million visitors. It is internationally recognised for its spectacular granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams and giant sequoia groves. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness. The park has an elevation range from 2,127 to 13,114 feet (648 to 3,997 m).

We felt as though we were at the

There are climbers on El Capitan!! Can you see them?

top of the world today when we reached the end of the road at Glacier Point.  It stands at an elevation of 7,214 feet (2,199 m) and there is a sheer drop of 3,200 feet (980 m) to Curry Village standing below. You need a good head for heights to peer over the barrier that’s for sure.

Here they are!!

El Capitan

Tunnel View with Half Dome the first view that Euro-Americans ever had of this magnificent place

Us at Tunnel View

Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point

Si at Glacier Point

El Capitan is a vertical rock formation 3,000 feet from base to summit along it’s tallest face and is one of the world’s favourite challenges for rock climbers. Today we were treated to such a spectacle and saw climbers on the sheer walls. Some of those who undertake the climb will do it over two days, so get to the halfway point, string up a hammock and spend the night suspended on the side of the rock before finishing their climb next day.  We were told that some of the more really extreme climbers have scaled it in two hours!!!!!! It would take us two years!!

Tomorrow (Saturday) we return to hike some of the less challenging trails.

Tonight for dinner we found a little gem of a place called Charlotte’s Hotel in Groveland. Great food, super atmosphere and was very popular with the locals. Not your typical American food, instead they served small plates of different foods that people could share instead of everyone getting oversized portions that mostly end up being thrown away.

Today we are bereft on two fronts! First of all we left Vegas, which we think of as a second home as we feel so comfortable there (I tried to persuade Si that we should cancel everything and spend the rest of our trip there but he wouldn’t do it!) and secondly we have lost a travelling companion!!

Alas, we no longer have LPG (Licence Plate Game) travelling with us.  We are so sad that he has gone.  It appears that when we swopped the car over last Sunday and in all the confusion he got left behind on the back seat of ‘the beast’ and is now travelling far and wide with another family.  All I can hear in my head is his little voice when he saw us driving out of the car rental facility calling ‘wait, stop, you’ve left me behind’.  We didn’t realise until this morning that he was missing.  We feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away when he realises he’s lost Wilson the basketball and he sobs uncontrollably ……….. we now know how he feels. LPG served us well for the first five weeks and five thousand miles of our trip and if we ever see his like again you can be sure we will snap him up. At least we have a photograph of LPG so we’ll never forget him.

Saw this on our drive today! Um, interesting!!

So, we drove from Las Vegas to a place called Groveland today which is just on the outskirts of Yosemite and we are staying in a lovely old B&B. We went to the local golf club for dinner (no photos of that I’m afraid) and were treated to the wonderful spectacle of deer coming out for their dinner too. We didn’t manage to get a photo of the deer but here’s one of the golf course.

Driving today we saw lots of different landscapes, we had barren desert, forests, lakes and best of all snow-capped mountains and a glimpse of Half Dome at Yosemite.  We even reached the dizzy heights of 10,000 feet above sea level. The temperature has gone from 102 degrees in Las Vegas to 64 degrees here!! 

Lake in Yosemite

We managed to sort out the problems we were having with uploading photos over the past couple of days so here’s a few pics taken while we were at the Bellagio and especially for Steve Blewitt, here’s Si eating and drinking!!!!

Tomorrow we will spend the day at Yosemite and I think we will have to put away our summer gear and get the jeans out ……… it’s going to be cooler!! 

What stomach!!??

Si and his Tennessee Highball!

Sandra and her Nigori Aviation!!!!!

The cheese plate!

One of the pools at the Bellagio

The pianist at the Petrossion Bar at the Bellagio

Oops, forgot to include the marmot we saw when we first entered Yosemite!

Hooray!  We are now at Mount Shasta and wifi has been restored!