Yose-MIGHTY

Yes when I was a kid that's what I would call Yosemite Sam instead of Yo-sim-meaty as I now know. But I think my way is more apt because everything in this place is larger than life. Just a 5 hour drive from San Fran and the buildings dwindle away to little villages and the pine trees dominate.

Just driving into the national park you get stunning vistas filled with an ocean of green and gigantic boulders. Then you get into the park itself and there's so much to do there. We saw Yosemite falls which are the 6th largest falls in the world. Nothing in size compared to Iguazu Falls in Brazil but its got its own thing going on and was beautiful all the same. Unfortunately the massive crowds around it diminished my enjoyment of it a bit. But that's OK because we then went off amd did some trails including Mirror lake and the Mist trail up to Vernal falls which weren't as crazy busy.

As lovely as the falls were and to a lesser extent the lake was, the hightlight for me was the sense of serenity nature gives you. The peaceful silence that's occasionally broken by a bird singing. The soft crunch of your footsteps on twigs. Not another person in sight. Just appreciating the bounty of nature. There were deer and cute little squirrels chewing on their nuts. And some beautiful blue birds. No bear encounters but that's because we were bear aware and ddn't bring any food with us.

Just me and the trees.

And these guys.

This guy kept shovelling twigs in his mouth.

Turn and chew, turn and chew.

We also drove 90 minutes south from the main area to Mariposa Grove to visit the sequoia trees. These ancients are 3000 years old and up to 100m tall. That's older than Jesus yo! They were tall, wide, red and very very impressive. Kevin was so awed he made one called the 'Grizzly Giant' his god and kept trying to worship him. This guy was so big one of his trunks looked like a whole new tree was growing out of him! And check out the size of the pinecones.

Roots of a fallen tree.

Appeasing the Gods.

Now thats a big pine cone.

It tooks us three days to cover most of the park but I could happily go back again and do it all over again. Maybe with bikes. Thanks Yosemite, you gave us a much needed break from the cities and next up, the most city of all cities - Las Vegas.