the beautiful pictureque Yosemite National Park! God it was sooooo beautiful! I was so excited because I had read so much about the highest waterfall of over 2500 ft being at yosemite and you can see I got what I wanted by looking at the picture to the left - isn't is great?! yes thats right, it dries up for about 6 weeks a year and we were there during that period! can you believe that! there was a little trickle coming all the way down which you can see best at the lower yosemite falls and that was it! unbelieveable! then later that afternoon we did a small hike around mirror lake and guess what - the entire lake had dried up! we were beginning to wonder if there was any water at all in the park! even so the whole place was still stunningly beautiful even without the water!

our second day there we though briefly about doing the infamous half dome hike and figured we'd walk up to the 3rd loop leading to it and see how we felt! we then met a guy called grant at the bottom and decided to walk with him, and we got to the top of the 3rd loop so quickly (half way up point) we decided to walk with grant all the way to the top! needless to say the second half up the mountain was a little tougher and took longer and was bloody hard work! the last 200m was actually climbing up the mountain pretty much vertically using cables, pulling ourselves up, was good in some ways as our legs were shattered from the hike so it was a big all body workout! on the way up we walked up 2 water falls both stunning, theres a photo of the 3 of us near the Navada falls, i know the sun is blocking it a bit but its still a good photo! then theres another one of gav and i almost at the top and then one of me actually at the top of a bit of hanging rock - yep that was scary but the view over the valley was second to none. i think the top of half dome is definitely in my top 5 lunch spots!! we then climbed back down which yes was a shorter journey but because we had started so late by the time we got back to Navada Falls it was pitch black so we hiked by torch! i was so scared a bear was going to come out and eat us especially as we were carrying food, and we had all run out of water so getting dehydrated - was not our proudest moment after climbing the mountain - but hayho we lived to tell the tale! Grant stayed with us for a few nights in our lovely warm tent cabin! oh my god it was freezing! we slept fully clothed, jumpers and all, wooly hats, under 3 blankets and felt just about ok! dont think id known cold like it up to that point!! but hay, doesnt our tent cabin look cosy!