By now we had settled into the driving, so getting onto the highway wasn't nearly as scary as before and soon we were well on our way to Yosemite. About an hour in we started passing Strawberry stalls and once the temptation grew too much, we stopped and picked up a pack or two - they were huge and juicy and delicious!

We arrived at our campsite shortly after lunchtime on Sunday 13 May and quickly made camp. We had lunch, packed the remainder of the food in the bear-box and took a drive down to see the giant sequoia forest, which was amazing. Its difficult to describe just how massive these trees are - apparently they are the largest single living things on the planet at almost 100m tall and over 30m circumference at the base. The one had a road carved into it that you could easily drive a truck through! We headed back to camp and got to put those old scouting skills to good use :-) We had chicken and potatoes and vegetables cooked in pressure packs (with a bit of chilli thrown in,) all eaten with disposable cutlery in paper bowls so no washing up - booya! Afterwards we just sat around the fire drinking wine and toasting marsh-mallows until it was dark and the stars came out. We packed everything into the bear box and settled into our little tent for the night. Yeah... so it turns out that camping on the cheap can be quite miserable :-/ Our mattress was tiny so we were pretty cramped and kept on sliding around, we didn't have sleeping bags so, even with all our warm clothes on, we were FREEZING cold and our sheets and blanket (kindly sponsored by Emerates) kept getting all twisted. Safe to say we didn't have a great night's sleep, but hey, those are the times you remember :-)

Monday we sleepily ate our cornflakes and then took a 40 minute drive into the Valley for the day. Once you park there are free busses that shuttle you around which is cool. We checked out the visitors center and watched a short film on the "Spirit of Yosemite" before getting a bus to the Lower Yosemite Falls. Afterwards we got a bus to Happy Isles and hiked for about 2 hours up a fairly steep path to the Vernal Falls. The route is also known as The Mist Trail, for good reason - you get absolutely drenched walking so close to the falls. Fortunately there is a nice, sunny granite slab on top to warm up on. The trip down was much quicker and soon we were in the car on our way home. Back at camp we made a fire and had pressure packs again for dinner. We tried to make our bed a bit warmer, but we still had a pretty awful night :-/

Tuesday we woke up with the birds and made a fire to defrost with our last few pieces of wood. We ate our cereal by the fire and then packed up camp. We had had a really cool few days and were actually quite sad to leave. We drove eastwards along Tioga Pass through the North of Yosemite. The pass is closed for at least six months of the year due to snow and had just reopened about a week ago, so there was still plenty of snow piled up along the sides of the road. We stopped at Olmsted Point for one last view down the length of The Valley, before heading over the mountains. On the way out we passed the frozen Ellery Lake, which was just beginning to thaw around the edges - quite a cool site. The driving in the US is much like what you see in the movies - long, wide open roads with a whole lot of nothing in-between. We just tuned the radio to a country & western station (we're in America!) and followed the GPS. We stopped for lunch at McDonalds somewhere to book some accomodation for that night and then continued on our long drive to Las Vegas...