Yosemite to Sequoia.

Miles driven: 2050 ish.
Weather: Still gorgeous.
Electronic gadgets not working: 3 (most worrying is the sat nav).
Bear sightings: zero.
Disappointment level because of this: high!!

It's been a crazy few days so lots to tell y'all! Colin keeps telling me off for not blogging regularly enough. Apparently i am not doing my job properly. Apologies. Other than that we are getting along just peachy considering i have to put up with him 24/7 and vice versa.

As you will have seen from the photos it would not be possible to not like Yosemite national park. It was so amazing and really great to chill out for a few days. The horses were a good idea. Colin's mule, Dennis, was a spritely young thing so no worries about it being lazy. It kept nudging my mule (Rio) up the bottom to keep him going. He was a bit past it we think. Very sweet natured but incredibly slow. For a group of mostly beginners, we did quite a challenging trail to Mirror Lake (which was completely dry at this time of year) and also we couldn't go all the way around due to a recent rock fall which was still too unstable to pass. Certainly for the best as if more rocks had started falling i don't think Rio would have noticed/cared to get a wriggle on a bit faster. He did alarm me at one point by walking straight for the edge of the path where it dropped steeply away. I thought he perhaps had decided to end it all right then. He thought long and hard about it, ignoring my pulling on his reigns and, when he felt like it (and only then) he carried on following Dennis, who was already halfway up the next hill. We had thought it would be a nice way to get around but rest our legs but it seems that was not the case. Don't know how but my legs got really cramped up so trying to get off the poor animal at the end was so painful. If you've already seen the photo I'm usually so much more dignified!!

The following day we did another hike up to the Vernal and Nevada Falls (2 of the few falls which still flow at this time of year). It was another 7 mile trek but much more difficult. We definitely walked off the burgers that day. So the next day we decided to have a driving day. Went much further into the park to Tuolomne Meadows. Don't know quite how but we ended up doing more walking. We thought it might be fun to walk around, rather than up Lembert Dome and on to Dog Lake which was beautiful. But at 8500ft above sea level and after the previous day's hike walking up a flight of stairs is difficult. This was not a walk in the park at all and at some point on the way back past the dome Colin suggested we had gone this far and climbed so high already that Lembert Dome didn't look so tough. Why did i agree? It can only be described as a monolith of rock which wasn't too bad climbing up until you looked down. At which point i had a moment (some might call it a breakdown) where i sat down, refused to go any further (it was only about 10m to the top) and promptly burst into tears as i could not see how i was possibly able to get down. Colin was sweet. He gave me a cuddle then told me there was a huge storm on it's way and as if by magic we were back at the bottom! The storm never materialised - strange!?! It ended up being another 5 mile strenuous walk.

Our final half day in Yosemite we drove to another large grove of trees (we like trees) where we did another few miles of wvalking, seeing some of the biggest Sequoia (giant redwood) trees in the park.

Then we drove on to Sequoia National park for a look at (yes, you've got it) more big trees. Of course all of this time we've been hoping to see a bear, from a distance naturally. Sadly this was not to be, although we did nearly walk straight into the deer which you can see in the photo with the massive antlers. We were both sad to be leaving the parks. We could easily have spend several weeks exploring them, but we had to move on to the bright lights of Las Vegas which i'm too tired to tell you about tonight. That story we'll save for later.