We’ve decided to put all of the San Francisco blog and photos together so Yosemite is first!!

So we had to meet at the bus stop place at 8.30pm on Monday night so we had a nice relaxing day and headed down there as it was getting dark. We arrived and to be honest it looked a bit dodgy down a side street, anyway there were loads of people there so we thought there must be a few buses going as we were told there would only be 10-15 people on the tour that we were going on. So one bus rolls up and turns out that all of the 36 people waiting were getting on the same bus!!
We signed in and then everybody starts getting on the bus and claiming their seats. We made friends with a guy from North Wales straight away, Morgan, so we sat with him. We stopped after a short while of setting off at a supermarket for a toilet break and to set the bus up for the night-which is called the “miracle”!!! So we claimed our beds on top of the table that had been transformed into a “bed” and settled in for the night. To say that I had to cling to Brian in the night would be an understatement, we rolled around the entire night!! So we get woken up at 6.30am the next morning just as we are entering Yosemite National Park and park the bus and start making breakfast. We were so tired but the anticipation of going to Yosemite was keeping us going!! They then took us to the beginning of the trailhead for where people could start their walks. We walked up to Vernal Falls and then onto Nevada Falls. The walks were so steep!! Just as we left Vernal Falls there was a 1000 ft vertical climb up a massive flight of steps to begin the next bit of the walk! We then carried onto Nevada Falls which is at the base of Half Dome (the logo for North Face!) and had lunch at the top with amazing views! We then met up with the rest of the group and headed to our camp ground for the night which was in Inyo National Park. We slept out under the stars in bear country!!

Day 2 we went to Mono Basin and we could swim in Mono Lake which had 4 times the salinity of the sea so you floated in it!! I didn’t fancy it but Brian had a go (see the photos!), We then went to Mammoth Ski Resort and hiked up to Devils Postpile which has been formed due to lava cooling over a long period of time and being able to form the honeycomb shape you can see in the pics. We then hiked the rest of the way up to Rainbow Falls and swam in the lake at the bottom which was possibly THE coldest water that we have ever been in!!! We camped out in the same spot as last night under the stars again.

Day 3 we spent back in Yosemite and went to Tuolomne meadows which really are beautiful. We then went to see the Sequoia trees, or in other words, humongous trees!!! This was a really nice place and we couldn’t get over just how big these trees really were, you probably can’t tell by the pictures as they don’t do it justice, but trust us, they were MASSIVE!! As it was our final night together as a group, they took us to California’s oldest bar so we could do the karaoke night there! We basically took over the place! We all had a really good night-some more than others (not mentioning and names-Brian!!) and we then spent the night on the bus sleeping or propping up the drunken people so they would not be sick as we travelled back to San Francisco as our trip came to an end. One of the German guys we met took a sleeping pill just as he staggered back to the bus and basically collapsed so we had to put him in the recovery position with a binbag by his head!!! We then woke up at 6.20am as we pulled back into the place where our trip had begun. We met some really nice people on this trip and made some good friends-see the pics!