I left my camping gear in San Francisco

Finally, after a fabulous trip up the coast we make it to San Francisco!  A destination that has been top of Stuart's wish list for years.

We drive to Belmont where our friend Audra lives and return the rental car.  We have a couple of nights staying at Audra's house.  As a thank you for having us to stay, we lavish her with gifts.  Tent, sleeping, bags, mattress, camp stove and many more luxury items.  She was so happy with all of our quality goods!

She takes us to a music festival in a square in Redwood City, that happens every Friday night in the summer (March to November, or something like that).  Do these people know how lucky they are?

Saturday, and Audra plays chauffeur for the day.  Stuart is so happy not to be driving for once, but I take Gladys with me just to be on the safe side!

We get to see all the sights of San Francisco that would be hard to get to without a car.  The presidio, Sutro baths, Golden Gate park, Half moon bay (so pretty) and the "other" side of Golden Gate Bridge.

After, two nights with Audra we head to a hotel in downtown San Francisco.  A very swanky place.  It's so swanky its address is 1 Nob Hill.

I offer them secondhand Walmart goods as payment for the room.  Unfortunately, this doesn't fly and we blow all our camping savings on this hotel!

We are very lucky that this hotel is located on one of the Cable Car routes, so every day we shuttle around San Francisco using this Cable car line and the F line trams.  I manage to take what must be one of the worst selfies ever, when riding the boards on the cable car.

This is more like it!

One of the things I had been looking forward to was driving down Lombard Street.  The "crookedest"street in the world.  I was dismayed to find that as an experiment they had just decided to close the street to traffic. Undeterred, we decided to walk up the street!  It's a fabulous view from the top, was great fun to walk up (and down) the street and I hope the city continues the experiment.

We spend a lot of time walking around San Francisco enjoying the blue skis and sunshine.  (On the day we left thick fog arrived, is it wrong to feel secretly smug about this?!)

We meet up for a coffee with Stuart's niece Leanne and friend Katy, who are on a Trek America trip and happen to be in San Francisco at the same time as we are. We have seen their photos on Facebook, we now know the correct way to pose for a photograph!

It's our 7th wedding anniversary during our visit to San Francisco.  The concierge at our hotel manages to get us a booking at a lovely restaurant overlooking bay bridge.  One of the advantages of staying in a swanky hotel!

We hire bicycles for the day so that we can cycle over Golden Gate Bridge.  Someone is feeling patriotic today!

We have a wonderful seafood lunch in Sausalito and then catch the ferry back across the bay, along with all the other cyclists, that we had to navigate around as we crossed the bridge.

The swanky hotel has a fabulous cocktail bar, called the Top of the Mark, with great views over the city.  Audra and her husband Dave join us for a drink.  Stuart and Dave have serious boys conversations.  Audra and I take Selfies!

To the coast

We head from Yosemite straight to the coast.  It's time to be beside the seaside.

We are very lucky to find a lovely campsite in Carmel Valley.  It's a great central location to base ourselves, but we have the usual campsite set-up issues!

However, we find that we had a nice lazy start to the day, and have pitched our tent and eaten before sunset.  It almost feels like we are on holiday!

It's so relaxing we find that we have plenty of time to just sit and watch the world go by..

...  plus we get to take a few photos...

Carmel Valley is a great central location for exploring the coast, and our first trip is to Monterey Bay.  An absolutely delightful spot, that we have both said we want to return to.  We spent quite a bit of time just watching the marine wildlife, the best being the sea- otters which seem to spend the whole time bobbing around grooming themselves.

We also had a fabulous seafood lunch at Fish Hopper, but there is something very wrong here!

Another trip out was to Big Sur which had some fabulous rugged coastlines to photograph.  There were also lots of raptors overhead, which we kept trying to identify, but I suspect that all the potential eagles and condors were actually hawks and falcons.  Note to selves, never travel without the binoculars ever again.  Ever!

We also spent some time in Carmel itself, which was a very quaint town, and although we thought we saw Clint Eastwood, we probably didn't.  (Binoculars would have been handy)

We had a thoroughly chilled out time at the seaside.

Flora and fauna around the coast

So that was Yosemite

..... we thought for a while that we were in Disney!

After the peace and solitude of Kings canyon and Sequoia park we were traumatized by what seemed like huge crowds at Yosemite.  It probably wasn't that bad, but it was certainly a shock after what we were used to.

On our last night in Sequoia National Park we had moved to a campsite at 7,000 feet.  It was here that we discovered that cheap Walmart sleeping bags are not 7,000 feet friendly.   We had a very cold night!   At Yosemite we find that the only campsites with space are at 7,000 feet or higher

We make a new plan and stay at a lovely motel in a funky little town just outside Yosemite, Mariposa.  It's an hours drive from the park, but we are in the downtown section, walking distance from lots of lovely restaurants and there are free music concerts on in the park in the evenings!  We'll just have to adapt and cope with a little relative luxury!

First day in Yosemite we spend in the valley.  We see Bridalveil falls, Mirror Lake and crowds.  

Day two we head up to the South Side of the valley hoping to find some quieter sites - as does everybody else!

We do a short sharp hike up Sentinel dome to see some amazing views and get an idea of why Yosemite is so popular.

Stuart is close to the edge, as ever.

We are missing our camping, so stop at one of the sites at lunch time to cook up some blueberry pancakes.  I make the classic deer/bear misunderstanding, and am about to hurl the half cooked pancakes in the bear proof locker, before I realise that a gentle deer is strolling by.

I don't need a mirror to know that I am having a bad hair day!

Finally, we head to Glacier Point to see the iconic view of half dome rock.

and views of the valley.  

You see, no-one is down there anymore, they are all up here!

We had hoped to see stars at Glacier Point, but partial clouds meant the views weren't great, we did however see a lovely sunset.

Queues and chaos of Yosemite

Sequoia and Kings Canyon

We are finally putting our Walmart camping gear into use.  We are pretty successful with pitching the tent, but we do find one technical glitch.  We purchased a double blow up mattress and this does not fit through the front door of the tent!

Stuart the engineer solves the problem by driving the car right up to the tent and using the 12v pump to blow up the mattress whilst inside the tent!

 We then head to see the Sequoia  trees.  I don't think that I have the words, and the photos certainly don't do justice to the absolute magnificence of the trees.  It's a long time since a sight has made me gasp out loud with its sheer beauty, but that happened when I saw the trees. Stuart and I were both blown away by the immense majesty of the trees.

Here are a few photos that try to show the scale of the trees

Sequoia is an active bear area, and they are very strict about keeping all food in bear proof containers, even toiletries must be kept in the containers.  As I put my mosquito anti-itch cream in the container after slathering myself in it, I wondered if the human smell would outweigh the potential food smell to a bear.  After two days without a shower I suspect that this would be the case!

We didn't really expect to see bears, so when one casually walked past the most popular tourist spot in the park (the General Sherman tree) we were amazed.  There were around 100 people at the tree. And the bear just strolled by

Later that day we went on a meadow walk.  There are a few beautiful meadows right in the heart of the forests, and Stuart called me over to see a deer.

I said that has awfully, shaggy hair, for a deer.

The "deer" lifts it's head out of the grass

And very round ears, for a deer

And a very snouty nose, for a deer

And aren't we standing a bit close to that Bear!

Even later that evening (we seem to have very long days at the moment, generally starting at sunrise).  We decided to climb Moro Rock, not as scary as Angels Landing,and certainly not as challenging, but it was an interesting climb, and I made it too!

That night we finally ate at 10pm!

Very early next day, before anyone else was up, we started our day with a walk round the Giant's trail.  It was a popular walk, that we hadn't had time to fit it in the day before.  It was just after sunrise, so we were the only ones on the trail, huge sequoias surrounding a beautiful meadow.

Suddenly Stuart stops and tells me to look behind and to my right, we have just walked past a mummy bear and three baby bears!!

We spend ages watching them.  The baby bears are being really playful, but whenever one of them gets spooked they shoot up a tree as fast as they can, which they manage very well.  But when they return to the ground they shuffle backwards awkwardly down the tree, as if they haven't quite mastered this technique yet.

We have eventually moved to one of the trail benches to sit and enjoy the show, when the baby bears decide to get on the path and head towards us.  Mama bear dutifully follows.  We realise that this will put us in an awkward position and head further round the trail.

We must have spent an hour watching this most magical show before anyone else shows up, and when someone does it is a ranger, who then goes away and returns with three other rangers, so we realise we have been very privileged to watch these beautiful bears.

We reluctantly leave and make our way to Kings Canyon, which I was expecting to be like Grand Canyon, but isn't at all.  The drive there is spectacular, and meanders down from the top of the canyon to the river level.  

We drive all the way to the end of the canyon, and take a short walk around one of the meadows to be treated to yet another spectacular site.

These two Parks have been an absolute joy, probably our favourite part of the trip so far.