****Sorry for the delay in updating but thank you for all your requests that we pull our finger out and hurry up**** Well what can I say about Yosemite? It is huge and beautiful and restored my faith in California. I think also the fact I am feeling better now has helped, but you can’t help but love this place. Every few hundred yards you can stop and take loads of amazing shots, so a digital camera is a must! Although the park itself is around 36 miles wide it can take hours to drive through because you keep stopping to [View Full Entry]

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Bears are a species I have never encountered, and to be honest, a species I’ve always wished to experience. A bear by my car. A bear in my trashcan. A bear in the sights of my telephoto or a bear scurrying away in daylight at the trailhead. But a bear near my bed or next to my tent? I don’t care for that. Ah yes, Yosemite National Park. In my first twenty-five years of being human I never witnessed The Colossus despite living a mere five hours south. It was always one of those undesired, over-populated RV hog-towns where [View Full Entry]

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Post Vegas we left for Yosemite National Park via LA. We stayed in a Chinese run motel during this transition period, with Taoist dolls on the JVC ghettoblaster (with twin tape decks to enable high speed dubbing, 3D sound and hyperbase function - all of which didn't work) and dead cockroaches under the bed. Our preffered means of accommodation, as you have already seen, is the tent. Sadly, four poles broke on the old Vango in one windy stay at the Grand Canyon meaning we had to find replacements before we could use it again. Apparently, they don't do replcements in [View Full Entry]

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So after a great time in San Francisco I set off for Yosemite park on the Bugbus. I had already met a few people (Jonathon, Emma and Laura) from my hostel going on the Bugbus and knew it was going to be a good weekend. We arrived at the bug hostel (just outside Yosemite park) at 9pm so it was in darkness although we managed to have a look around the Spa (unfortunately there was no time to use it) and meet the other people over a beer. The next day we woke up to glorious weather and set off for [View Full Entry]

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Hello, Firstly if you ever wondered why I never put the name of the place we're in, in the title . Thats because the most visited blog i've written is the one called Toronto and Niagara Falls, 127 people have viewed that blog, I don't think I know 127 people, next most popular was the Miley Cyrus one. As people just search the title. Anyway, after a very windy drive up and over the hills out of San Francisco and passed a huge windmill farm along the way. We parked up in a little town called Groveland about 22 miles from [View Full Entry]

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After a short stopover in Merced (a strange town that was completely empty even though it was Saturday) where I had to do my shopping ready for the coming 5 days I jumped on a bus to take me to the Yosemite Bug Hostel. The hostel is not actually in the park but about an hour and a half journey away. However, it is located in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rolling hills and endless forestry so gets two thumbs up from me. On my first full day i jumped on the first bus i could get at 8.30am (usually [View Full Entry]

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Some photos from my trip this summer to California, specifically in Yosemite Valley and Kings Canyon. [View Full Entry]

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Simon's creative juices have dried up so I'm back on blog duty. Yosemite National Park is simply breathtaking in its enormity. Words wouldn't be able to do justice to the immense rock faces (which we didn't attempt to scale), the lush towering forests, the clear rivers and the waterfalls which were not quite falling but more like trickling in the summer. It was really hot when we were at the park and very busy. It took ages to drive along the windy roads to get to Yosemite Valley. The place is a lot bigger than we anticipated and we could've done [View Full Entry]

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We (me and Shashank started from San Francisco) left San Francisco at around 2 am. Initially we had planned on a 2 day hikes: Tenaya lake to clouds rest (Around 10 mile roundtrip) and Mount Dana (Around 6.5 roundtrip). Mount Dana peaks at 13000 ft being the second highest mountain in Yosemite with spectacular views of Mono Lake from top. Its a 216 mile drive from Stanford through a number of state and inter-state highways. Among the numerous exits, the exit to I-238 was closed and we circled around for an hour before we got on track. Winton Avenue became our [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in LA, Claire was at the airport to meet me. It was nice to spend a couple of days with her and Sam in their lovely beachfront apt. I enjoyed catching up with my nephew a bit, and taking long walks along the beach with Claire. She drove me down to Dad’s place, about an hour south. It’s always an interesting experience to spend a week in Dad's Leisure World Senior Community and get a glimpse of his daily routine. I camped out on a futon on his living room floor, went walking with him and his sweet doggie Benny, [View Full Entry]

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