We woke up slightly later than intended, and walked to a motel a bit further up the road which we'd spotted the previous evening that advertised fresh ground coffee and home baked goods. And boy did it! We had fabulous coffee and delicious cherry and coconut cake sitting in a lovely green garden with lots of plants and bird feeders. There were lovely little sparrow type birds, something which might have been a cardinal and some finches. There we also yellow and black butterflies which were as big as my hand span which were gorgeous and George was very brave and got close to the biggest, fattest bees I have ever seen. They were at least an inch and a half long and an inch fat. You would not like to get stung by one of these, you would defintely lose an arm..
After a very leisurely breakfast we packed up the car and started the two and a half hour drive into Yosemite valley. This started with a beautiful, winding ascent into the mountains, quick stop about half an hour in to take pictures by a teeny hydro-electric dam and on through a toll booth where I soon remembered a small flaw in our plan to visit Yosemite. Yep, that's right, I am terrified of heights and we were driving on roads with alternating sheer drops down rocky mountains, and huge rocky outcrops from taller mountains on the right hand side. In England, I would have been a bit freaked out, but ok. In America where the passanger side is on the right I was fighting not to ask George to turn the car round so I could go foetal in the motel and never go near mountain again. Another point worth mentioning is that aparently they down believe in crash barriers here. Occasionally, for the bigger drops there were tiny little calf high walls as a sop to us big girl's blouses out there. They did not help.
We stopped about halfway there for a photo opp by a waterfall and realised as we stopped that actually when you weren't moving it was quite warm and maybe we should put some sunblock on... Or rather we should have put some sunblock on about an hour before.. George's arms had gone past pink and were well into lobster, as were my shoulders, chest and nose. We put the roof up, and suncream on and drove further into the valley with the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou playing to cheer us up. We didn't see any bears sadly. I thought I saw one twice, only to realise they were trew stumps both times.. I did see a deer with impressive horns, but it was cold comfort frankly.
We had another pause quite close to the bottom to take photos of a really high up waterfall and have a paddle in a little stream which presumably was an offshoot of the very far away waterfall. Certainly it was so cold I was worried my feet might fall off. There were also some giant ants, about the same length as my thumbnail. I don't know what they feed the insects here but all I can say is I'm glad we didn't see any spiders..
Yosemite was incredible - pretty much everything was about twenty times bigger than expected, mountains, trees, waterfalls, random giant rocks and some of the fattest squirrels you have ever seen. It was spectacular and stupendous and awe inspiring and the deli there does a banging sandwich. All in all, well worth a visit. Sadly we didn't make it to the seqoia tree bit, as it would have been another 4 hours worth of driving, but they had kindly transplated one in the 1930s so we got the idea. Donkey was very impressed.
We drove back, used a lot of aloe to try and minimise the appaling sunburn we were ineventable about to suffer with. After a lot of water and half a tube of aloe we set out on foot to the (aparently) famous Whoa! Nellie's Diner. They aren't fond of a pavement in America but we managed to find a fairly safe path along the road. George had chicken jumbolia and loved it, I had (only option, but delish) grilled vegetable pizza. More importantly they had mango margharitas, which were strong, cheap and maybe the best drink I've ever had.
We wove our way back to the motel to sleep off the booze in readiness for our drive to San Bernadino and the Wigwam Motel..
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