Yosimite, snow and trees

What I should be doing is making my youngest daughter a birthday card for her birthday tomorrow. What I have been doing is playing wii fit, and getting very frustrated with bits of paper that keep refusing to stick where I want them to. So I am having a break and putting some more of our USA trip on here.

On Sunday 1st June we fortified ourselves with a buffet breakfast that was not a patch on those we had had in Vegas (and nearly paid for 3 instead of 2 when Martin didn't spot the waitress had bought over the wrong bill). Then we booked out and set off straight for Yosimite village.








We had a quick look round the museum which was quite interesting but involved a lot of reading and really we wanted to get outside and see the real thing, and walked around the mock up of an Indian village.



We discounted using the tour busses as they took too long having to keep stopping to let people on and off, and set off to drive the 18 miles up to Glacier point.

We were going to go straight up but we were so stunned to see snow along the way that we stopped to take some photos.





We did try to walk out to the snow but the field was swampy from snow melt.

At the top you are 8,000 feet above sea level, and the views are stunning!

There was a real mix of people also enjoying the sights,
from little old ladies puffing and panting up the slight incline, to super fit athletic types who were looking over the edge to see where their next trek was going to take them.

It was a fair drive from there, back down to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. I had never heard of these until Scrapdolly mentioned them on the phone to me, so didn't really know what to expect.

I was very impressed. We opted for the tractor tour, which in some ways was brilliant because you got an audio tour guide with all the history of the Grove and the trees, on the other hand it was jolly bumpy and we were glad to get off at the last stop to walk slowly back to the start point at our own pace.



Having enjoyed the last Best Western inn we had looked up the nearest one to Yosimite before leaving it, in the room handbook. We found the one at Oakwood easily but it was a real disappointment. The pool looked far from inviting, as it sat in a very shady part of the gardens under the trees, and the spa was broken and shut up. The restaurant attached was under notice of new management and there was a queue of kids waiting to use the free Internet connection. We walked down towards the town, I admit the bit we saw looked very sad and depressing, mostly thrift shops or empty cafes. We really must learn to drive ALL the way through the towns though because when we drove out the following morning we discovered we were really still on the outskirts, and the real Oakwood was nestled further round the corner, and was actually quite metropolitan.

We ate in a huge dinner three doors (ooh sorry should have measured that in blocks) which was virtually empty. We had our first course, and thought we could possibly force down some apple pie and ice cream., We waited and waited, but it didn't arrive. Finally the waitress came and asked us (again) if we needed anything else, we reminded her we had ordered desert. Now I know from my brother that if cafes make mistakes, many Americans expect to have the meal for nothing to make up. When we visited him in Arizona he delighted in attempting to discover mistakes just to get a freebie. But of course we Brits are not like that and the poor waitress was so grateful that we made no fuss, she kept coming over and thanking us.