Break in Yosemite

Yes I know, I know. You don't have to keep whinging and bitching I'm here filling in this blog entry. Right, settle down. This is going to be a long one - with pictures!

As most of you know - last year we decided to do this - an extension of the driving holiday of a couple of years ago. Fly back to San Francisco, pick up a rental car, drive down to Monterey and from there into Yosemite. Didn't quite work out that way because of the green cards. But we had to keep the Yosemite bit. For a start lodging in the park is booked out through 2008 and we both needed a break.

So Wedneday morning found us up at the ungodly hour of 5am and off to the airport. We flew by regional jet - teeny thing - handles like a ferrari, stops on a dime - to Reno. Pleasant surprise was that we got upgraded to a Subaru Legacy, we made pretty good time towards Ebbetts Pass, the weather got steadily worse and we wound up driving over a mountain pass in a snowstorm. As we came back down the sun came out and after lunch it was downright pleasant.

We arrived at Yosemite lodge at around 5pm unpacked and went for dinner. This is my one gripe - the food was no great shakes but it was extortionately expensive. After dinner we went for a walk to the foot of Yosemite Falls, which you could see out of our bedroom window. C then began to fade so we went back to the room, killed all the mossies (if you ever need to get a bunch of them in a hurry use a towel it squishes them beautifully.) and off to bed.

Our full day in the park was a hoot, we hired bikes in the morning to ride around the cycle trails in the park. Yes, I did say ride and yes, both of us were on the bikes, see pictures after this blog entry. We rode up to Mirror Lake and hiked a little way around it, then back towards Half-dome, over to Curry Village across Swing Bridge and back down to the Lodge. C was fine on his bike me, not so good. I enjoyed it but having to back pedal to brake was tricky. Plus the lemmings - sorry pedestrians - kept letting C by and then fanning out so I had to grind to a halt, these bikes need bells. After lunch we nipped out to El Portal to get petrol (3 bucks a gallon - because they can) and then up to Glacier Point which wasn't listed as open in our guide but the road said "open" so up we went. It took about an hour but the view was well worth it and on the way down we stopped off at Bridal Veil Falls and walked up to the viewing area. Fantastic doesn't really cover it, but it'll have to do.

For dinner that evening C had planned on the Awahanee (spelling) which has a fantastic restaurant, and a dress code. Now I read the guide and wasn't too jazzed about eating posh because it meant having to take smart clothes (which didn't crease and fitted inside our tiny carry on, half of which was taken up with my hiking boots - you get the picture). Himself hadn't read the guide - go figure. So we ended up at Degnans which serves homemade pizza and garlic bread. Obviously our last day was just the drive back - which with the sun out over Ebbetts pass was truly stunning - and the flight home. Ho hum.