Today Jo & I were up early (5am!!) to head off to Yosemite. I remember this from geography class, it's the oldest or biggest or busiest national park or something like that.....it's like the peak district only as with everything in america its bigger!

After picking everyone up we drove across the bay bridge - a double decker suspension bridge just as impressive as the golden gate bridge. We drove through hours of fog until we hit the sierra mountains. Here the sights were quite amazing as we headed up a twisty mountain road (think the road between holmfirth & glossop but bigger) over 2000m above sea level, passing walnut trees, pine nut trees, almond trees, cashew trees.....sounds like death mountain to me!

First stop in Yosemite was to see the giant sequoia trees. Massive pine/fir type trees which grow over 100m tall before they either get hit by lightning or are so heavy so they topple over. They're the largest living thing in the world and some are 3000 yrs old! Same as cleopatra! So a bit like the goyt valley but bigger.

We stopped a couple more times to take pics before having lunch & time to explore at Yosemite falls. Was quite cold and some of the waterfalls were frozen up. The scenery was huge, massive rock formations created by glaciers, so beautiful & a chance to try my new wide angle lens - not sure my pics will do it justice (not helped by my inability to use my camera)

Unfortunately we didn't see any bears, mountain lions or other furry animals :-( did see some cows & sheep so bit like a bigger winetts pass in castleton.....

Will try upload my pics tomorrow, tonight it's another early night as off wine tasting at 8.30am!! This is after we just paid less than $10 for 2 huge glasses of really nice red wine in a local Mexican cafe :-) an improvement on last nights extravagance! (Jo was particularly impressed and asked me to add that bit!)