Mainly Yosemite

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Well we spent a morning sorting out the trips we wanted nto do while in San Francisco and booked a Greyhound for the next leg of our trip - Greyhound to to Santa Cruz, then hire car to LA, camping on the way.

Our first trip was a tour of San Francisco itself with a youngish guy called Dylan - Welsh father who liked Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan. He pointed out all the sights to us - took us to Haight Ashbury (again) - and past the Grateful Dead House - now a yuppified des res. We went over the Golden gate bridge to the John Muir Redwood park. We had about an hour and a half to wander round it - the trees are big - no photos cos they just don't fit in the frame. Then back to San Francisco itself.

Friday we spent the day in the park and were picked up that evenong by bthe Yopsemite Bug Bus and driven out to Yosemite. As we came out over the bridge, he turned on the music - "Truckin'" . We just laughed and then got another hour of Grateful Dead. Three hour drive here and had a sadwich a beer and bed.

This morning we were driven round Yosenite with a couple of walks on the way, climbed Setinel Peak, went and saw some of the oldest surviving redwoods (one of which, the Batchelor is over 1600 years old, the trees themselves are over 20 feet in diameter and god only knows how high. Last trail we did took us up Yosemite valley to the lower of the 2 falls (still a 3 mile hike and a 200ft climb (the falls drop down over 500 ft from a lake near the head of the valley)).Great place. Again, it's all on a huge scale. The autumn colurs were great - dog oaks, big leaved maples (the leaves are bigger than my hand) and numerous other trees which I didn't recognise. Saw a couple of peregrines, more mule eared deer. All in all a fantastic day - if we win the lottery will definitely come back here and spend a month exploring the area properly The Cliffs round the main valley are some 6 -7000 ft almost straight up. Saw a few climbers way up the cliffs (its a 6 day climb bivouacing in hammocks slung from the cliffs (these guys are real crazy)). Back to base for some food and a couple of beers before bed.

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