Right, the photo to the left is a view from Glacier point at Yosemite and overlooks the hike we did! we started beyond the left hand side and if you close enough you can make out the 2 waterfalls we climbed up (i wish i could mark them) and then we climbed up the big half dome (hence the name) on the left of the photo! yep that far! 17 mile round trip, 9000ft up and it took us all of 10 hours to complete! we had planned on hiking on our second day but we could barely move when we woke up! luckily grant had a car so he drove us around all day which was great because it meant we could go to Mariposa Grove and see the giant sequoias too!




so here are 2 photos which i hope show how big these trees are! these are both over 2000 years old and they are just gianormous!! the one of grant and gav in the tree is the california tree, they cut the whole out in the 1890s and the tree appartantly is still healthy and growing! the other is a tree we walked past and gav i thought we'd hug it, certainly makes you feel your size next to them! we did about a 3-4 mile hike around these trees and it was pretty flat so we all coped ok! these trees are pretty amazing, i think it was something like 1 in 10 million seeds grow to become fully mature and they are dying out but will still survive a while just because they live so long! pretty cool! the grissly giant tree is the oldest in this park and some of its branches are bigger than trunks of regular trees!


After Mariposa Grove we decided to change all of our plans entirely, skip santa barbara which although was a shame we would have only been there a day and it would have involved so much travelling, so instead we went on a roadtrip with grant to his uni house in Flagstaff and we are so glad we did! uni houses out here never cease to amaze me they are so nice and big! on the way to his house we drove up to mount whitney, the 2nd tallest mountain in USA, tallest in CA i think around 14000ft high! we assumed it was the mountain covered in cloud because we couldn't see any other mountains taller! we passed so much stunning scenery on the way it was another truely memorable journey. i looked for bears whilest we were still in forest land but to no avail! we were going to drive through death valley but it would have been dark by the time we got there so decided it wasnt worth the detour, we did however pull over and got corn dogs - gav and i didnt like them at all, battered sauage bring it on but not sausage covered in corn break - yuk! grant however had no problem eating our dogs too! the next day grant and his friends jess and sorry forgotten the other girls name, anyway, they took us to Sedona National Park for the day to walk their dogs - every student in america has dogs apparantly, i couldn't imagine anything worse while at uni! the part was lovely, huge red rocks of different shapes and structures, a completely different texture to the red rock ampitheatre in the rocky mountains, this was more clay like but still rock hard!! it was so pretty, the colours from the trees and shrubs around and the clay colour all around it was just lovely and made us really glad we had done the road trip! thank you grant and friends for a great day out! and doesnt the photo just look stunning!