An earlier start, as we had to be ready for our trip to Sequoia. Our driver, Paul, was the nicest, open chatty fella we'd met yet, and he promised us a talkative day on our bus. Turns out he's married to a brummie. There were just 9 of us on our 21 seater so plenty of room to swap sides and grab photos (and stay away from each other!) we had a really nice trip but it was slightly marred by a couple of our companions - the couple from Liverpool were nice but all of us were outgunned, outvoted and outspoken by another of those professors we keep meeting - this time a political science one from New Yorkwho had opinions on everything, including england, which we weren't too impressed by. Sadly he kept talking to Paul about the political structure and administration of the national parks which was interesting for 3 and a half minutes. Unfortunately he didn't stop when he was ahead and carried on for the next 4 hours. We sat at the back and chatted with the liverpudlian couple.

Sequoia itself was really interesting, when paul managed a snatched contribution to the tour - we hadn't anticipated rising up over 1500m and witnessing the scale and variation of vegetation in the park. The scale of the US and California is quite amazing, and you can understand some of the American thinking - within a few hundred miles are the lowest and highest points in the US, and that's but a fraction of the state.

The redwoods which comprise the largest trees in the world (the worlds largest living things) are spectacular -all of the pines are really tall and impressive - but strangely they are all in a fairly narrow band of altitude. Walking around them you get an amazing sense of how these things are really old - up to 3,000 years, and many of them are scarred by fires - either natural or planned.

the huge redwoods have pathetically tiny cones - about the same size as your average Xmas tree - the sugar pines, on the other hand, neighbours to the redwoods, have serious seeds - up to 2 feet long. somehow its the wrong way around, the sugar pines are fairly ordinary (on this scale at least).

Along the way to visit the centerpiece - General Sherman (largest living thing ….) - we walked around a meadow surrounded by huge trees, as well as climbing Moro rock to get truly spectacular views around huge parts of the park but still only a small part.

Seeing the tree finally was almost an anticlimax - in Derry's words 'it's not that big' - it wasn't so much larger than everything else and you couldn't get close to it, so it didn't quite meet the expectation. Still, it was still pretty impressive. Not the highest, or the widest, but the biggest by volume.

It's now a few days later so memories are fading, but we remember having a good day overall - paul was good fun, engaged nicely with the kids, and made the trip enjoyable. After all he ought to, he's been doing this for 17 years so he better know his stuff! We all came back glad we did the tour, knowledgeable and impressed. So we dove (dontcha just lurv Americanisms?!) into the pool again for a cooldown before having a 'finish off all the food' attempt where we all ate whatever was left!