The drive from Death Valley to Yosemitee was long we entered the National Park via the East entrace and the toiga pass. We climbed to 10000ft and as we did the snow got thicker. We finally arrived at the North Pines campground at around 11.30pm, found a pitch and settled in for the night.

The next morning we were up early and drove into the village for some much needed coffee before heading out of the village towardss Mariposa Grove. The park was pretty busy and we couldn't secure a tent site in the village so had to drive East for an hour in order to be able to stay in Yosemitee. We then spent the day walking around Mariposa forest which is one of the places where you can see the best examples of the famous California Giant Redwood trees or 'Sequio'. We hiked up to around 5000ft and had a beatiful view over the valley floor. The trees themsleves were amazing you could even walk through one of them.

That night Ben made a rather smokey campfire to keep us warm while we had dinner and then we packed everything with a smell including toothpaste into the bear box in the hope that if any black bears did enter our site they wouldn't come near the van!!! Although Ben did leave some coke a cola on myside of the van which I found the next morning. Now what do we think a bear would prefer coke, or toothpaste!! (i think he was still hoping for that more personal encouter with a wild bear!).

We were awake early the next day and drove back into the village where we had quite an eventful morning. Ben managed to lock the keys in Ray Ray at 7am, so we spent an hour fretting about how much it would cost to call someone out to get them back... thankfully we bumped into a Park Ranger. This is a common problem in the park so they are trained how to break into cars. We had the keys back in our hands an hour later!

We then hiked up to mirror lakes where you can see the mirror image of half dome in the lakes, it was only a few miles and due to recent rock fall we couldn't hike any higher up. So we walked back into the village and hiked the valley floor trail.

As the park was so busy we couldn't get another pitch for Wedneday night, so we decided to head back to San Jose a little ealier than planned.