On friday we travelled by car, bus, train, bus, and one more bus for 8 hours in order to get to Yosemite National Park. It was 100% worth it.

Rather stupidly, we only tried to reserve a camping pitch the day before, and as it was a nice weekend we were told there was nothing available, but we went anyway with the belief that it wold be easy to find a spot when we got there. There wasnt, only irritatingly smug 'camp full' signs. Our only hope rather than have to hang our heads and plod out of the park was to pitch our tent in'backpackers camp' - an area reserved for hardcore hikers with wilderness permits for one night only before they headed to the backcountry. Needless to say we received a few smirks when we erected our pathetic looking $30 tent - "rain resistant" really doesnt look that impressive in reality; it was just a small hat on top of the tent, the rest was simply a flysheet.

Like all pro campers (or so we told ourselves) we went to bed as soon as it got dark (we had been up since 4.30am) after an enourmous pizza - almost as big as I remembered from a previous brief trip to the park when i was 12. In yosemite you have to lock all smelly stuff in a bear-proof metal locker away from your tent, kate didnt fit in it though so we risked it.

Remaining in the same campsite with no permit for the rest of the weekend resulted in countless heart in mouth moments as we kept reading warnings that we would get our stuff impounded and get fined, and by the end we felt a lot like Yogi bear and his little sidekick - on the run from the rangers (and i do like sandwiches!)

On saturday we hiked 8 miles upwards (over 3000 feet elevation gain) to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. As it was the end of september there was no snowmelt left so the falls were dry, but the hike was great, pretty challenging , especially as we hadnt taken enough water - but that gave us a chance to use our water purification tablets to purify stream water - we really felt like pro's! The scenery in yosemite is spectacular, there's so much wildlife, huge soaring granite cliffs, trees as big as skyscrapers and perfect blue skies.

On sunday, aching and tired after the hike and another night freezing cold in our stupid tent we admitted we couldnt really tackle Half Dome (double the elevation from the Falls hike and 18 miles long), so we did a more gentle hike up to Vernal falls, still fairly difficult in the heat as it was very steep. This was the only waterfall in the park still running, it was really nice, we stayed at the top for a while trying to take photos of the rainbow mist, then descended and strolled around different parts of the park for the rest of the day.

Over the trip we went on several bear hunts, we tried to find a big one, and we werent (very) scared, but unfortunately we didnt find any of Yosemite's most famous inhabitants. We did see two wolves (they walked across our path literally no more than 10 feet away), countless deer - the best of which were a pair of fighting stags, a possible snake (unconfirmed, may well have been a log, we didnt dare get further into the cave!), several lizards and geckos, two woodpeckers, Californian Bats, and some weird bright blue birds - so not bad in all!

On our final night we looked up for the first time, to witness the clearest skies weve ever seen. We lay in our tent wrapped up snug as bugs and looked at the stars, even seeing a shooting star, and despite Kate moaning it was a bit cliched it was a great end to a great trip.