Advertisement
Yosemite National Park
The most beautiful place I have been. Looks like a fairytale. My million pictures don't do it justice. (Half Dome in the centre). Not happy with 2 continents in the last year year, I wanted to put a third on the list. An invitation to San Francisco is hard to turn down, especially when you have 3 incredible people there you haven't seen in a very long time. So fly to San Fran I did, and spent 2 weeks seeing what West coast America was all about and why my friends there love it so much!
Now I will admit to having a few preconcieved ideas about America, but being the opened minded person that I am I was willing to allow those ideas to be challenged. And yes they were. Though I think that's beacuse San Francisco and probably California is a bit of an anomoly in that big country of United States. I found the people to be incredibly liberal, environmentally aware, friendly and inked up to their eyeballs. I think I stood out for NOT having any tatoos!!! Perhaps I should see to that!!!
So after being collected from the by Vin airport I spent my first couple of days checking out the city. Golden Gate Park, Ocean beach, Japanese Tea Gardens and 'The Haight' (SFs most culturally and
The rare sunset - especially for me!
San Francisco has a freakish fog phenomenon as its on a peninsular, so you don't get to see this very often!! racially mixed neighbourhood, grew from the scence of concerts by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) - very hippy, very cool, lots of cute American/Victorian architecure . After a dose of the city I was ready to get out and see what the rest of California had to offer. Rather a lot it would seem. But with a rental car for only 4 days we had to be selective. First stop had to be Yosemite. Oh my goodness. Anyone that goes to California should put this at the top of thier list. It's out of this world. Think steep, sheer, granite rock faces, with cascading waterfalls. Mountains covered in pine trees, surrounding a valley floor covered in lush green medows and pine forests. Think fantasy land. Think my idea of heaven. Ok, so I loved it in case you can't tell. We spent a couple of nights camping here, enough time to hike up Bridalveil Falls for an amazing view of the valley and the famous El Captain and Half Dome. 4700ft of granite rising out of the valley floor -thats big!! It can and has been done as a rock climbing route, but takes days of solid
Morris dancers - Californian style!!
Quite unlike the English ones, I tried explaining the difference! climbing and granted I'm probably not quite good enough!! So from Yosemite we went on to a place with rock climbing that we could do, a tiny town called Senora. The climbing is at a place called Table Mountain thats overlooks a resevoir. Stunning scenery and all to ourselves as we the only ones crazy enough to climb in the Californian summer sun.
From Senora we drove back to the city in time for my weekend with the ladies. Kate and Heather who I worked with for SPW in Uganda were flying in from Wisconsin and Sacromento. It had been a year since we had said our goodbyes and they weren't missing out on me being in the country. If Uganda was anything was anything to go by we were sure we could make some fun in a developed country!!! We checked into our downtown hotel, superbly located near lots of good places to eat, drink and be merry. Over the course of the weekend we ate and drank A LOT, was shown some sights (i.e. other places to eat and drink) by Heather's brother, rode around on the trams to explore more places to eat and drink and
Bay to Breakers 12K annual fun run
Thats some see-saw mechanism thingy in the middle. Not much running going on! did cultural stuff like museums and kayaking. Oh and of course a guided tour of the night life in the gay capital of the world. It was an awesome weekend catching up with a few of the incredible people I have met so far on my travels. Here's to friendships.
After recovering from the weekend (obviously my stomach hurt from all the laughing) it was time to see what being a resident of San Francisco felt like. That meant sampling some of the exquisite cuisine on offer, including various flavours of Ben and Jerry's and walks around the Bay to see what all the fuss is about some red bridge. So after a million pictures of a red bridge it was time to go home, sorry back to Sydney.
I think I just had a taste of what California and the West coast has to offer. I quite liked it. I think I may be going back.....
Enjoy the photos.
Lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Credits: Photos mostly by Vin
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0299s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mum & Dad
non-member comment
California Girl
It doesn't seem to matter where you go you always meet up with old friends & make new ones ! What a lucky girl you are ,so glad you are enjoying your travelling life ,the photos are awesome but I bet they don't really do the views justice ,you can tell from your descriptions how good they are,take care miss you , Love Mum & Dad XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX