We left Yosemite early, with mixed feelings, glad to be leaving the a very busy park but also marking a definite break in the type of holiday we were on. Up until now we had been focusing on parks, natural beauty and a lot of walking. By leaving that behind we were not only changing our holiday type but also recognising that our three week extravaganza was now entering its last 7 days.

The transition from nice wide single lane roads with no traffic to narrow laned freeways full of cars was fast and we found ourselves quickly engulfed in busy commuter traffic wanting to get home on a friday afternoon. We arrived at our RV park which was to be our home for the next two nights and could not quite take in the difference between it and the campsites we had been in previously. Up until now we had pitches which would have been 300 to 400 square feet in size with trees and benches and fire pits all to ourselves. here it was a parking space, literally, i could not even bring myself to take a photo but it would have to do.

Fortunately, not by planning, we were only a 10 minute walk from a ferry that would take us into the ferry port at San Francisco so very soon we were on our way for a recce visit to the city. Our first port of call was pier 33 where we would get our Alcatraz tour tickets. we found that the next available tour was august 25th some 4 weeks later so there nothing else for it, we walked to fishermans wharf and got some beer and fish. Another unexpected thing about the place was the fact that it was very very cloudy and pretty cold. we had got used to 30C and above almost all of the the time without a cloud in the sky but here it was barley 20C Siobhan managed to hit this home buy saying that it was actually warmer in the UK at the time….

The next day we woke to bright sunshine and sailed back to San Francisco with new resolve, if we were not going to go to Alcatraz then we would hire bikes and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was simply unbelievable, a bike ride I will never forget. The rest of the day we walked around looking at fishermans wharf and we rode one of the cable cars to the ferry after looking at Lombard street, the famous zig zig road from all the films.

San Francisco is a pretty laid back place and cosmopolitan with it, I think that I could easily loose my self in the city for a couple of years, they ride bikes, are generally nice people and the food is good. My main observation is that there seems to be a lack of colour. the buildings seem to be quite grey or at least lacking vibrancy which I did not expect at all. In fact I am beginning to think that California is a bit monotone compared to Utah and Arizona, maybe its expectation but it all seems a bit flat……

After too little time we have to leave San Francisco and start our slow journey back to Phoenix via the west coast.

From Bryce we had the short hop to Zion, described by some as the closest thing to heaven on earth, and in my humble opinion they were not wrong.

With its towering red, canyon walls, swirling high into the sky like like rippled ice cream it would be hard to beat (but there is still Yosemite to come). Our pitch for the night was right next to the virgin river, where the kids played a slightly feral version of swallows and amazons, where they laid claim to small islands in the river, defending them by throwing water, sand and on occasions even stones at each other. No need to drag the kids on a sunset walk tonight it is right on our doorstep, looming above us is the mighty Watchman.

Next to the strangest walk we have ever taken the kids on. A pretty walk up a riverside (unfortunately with hundreds of other keen tourists), heading deeper into the canyon, and then into the river to wade a further mile or four, we clearly did not intend to complete the full eight mile round trip.

The first thing Joe asked as the river quickly reached above his belly button was whether he would need to swim! We then spent the next two hours on Joe’s fantasy adventure up the river, dodging “rapid monsters”, that were described in minute detail, finding caves, secret sky gardens and importantly stretches of dry land.

Our next day starts early, off to meet our guides Rich and John for a family canyoning adventure. After the Grand Canyon I am not so convinced Mae is going to brave up, but I am wrong. We spend the next four hours, climbing up over “obstacles” known to most as rock faces, and squeezing (a technical term I am told) through gaps that barely look big enough for Joe, to then descending the canyon via a 45ft abseil, a bit more squeezing, or in my case getting stuck and eventually just dropping to the ground when gravity finally took over, a bit of a bum shuffle and another squeeze / fall and a final abseil. Whilst Joe did a tandem, abseil the rest of us braved it solo.

The Strip

Woke early and left the kids sleeping to drive to Las Vegas. Very easy and soon we were there. Leaving Utah to go into Nevada saw an instant change. We were no longer in the state where to buy beer you had to order food. No, across the state line we were greeted with the first exit off the highway for a casino, adverts for adult shops and liquor stores every where, I quite like Nevada.

Any how we thought that as this was our first experience of civilised America, sorry Phoenix, we decided to do a bit of shopping. First destination a bill outlet mall. Have you ever tried parking a 30 foot bus in a shopping centre? well after driving around for all of 10 minutes we were stopped by a mall cop on a segway. Needless to say the Englishman in me said “oh no we are in trouble, he is going to kick us out”. No he simply said “you looking for parking? Park there, there, THERE!” whereby he was pointing to the valet parking. To park there I had to do a nasty little reverse around the corner and negotiate reasonable traffic at the same time. The Mall cop stopped the traffic, guided me in my manouver then escorted us to a 6 car bay parking space letting me take up the whole lot. He left saying “this is my valet parking, you can’t park but take you time and have a nice day!” so it was back to the sickeningly good and considerate service we have got used to while staying here, all very depressing.

a bit of shopping then a drive down the strip to take it all in. a bit of Blackpool on serious steroids. I love Blackpool but I have to confess the Vegas has never been a dream destination for me. I was not disappointed, it still would not be, not really my bag but interesting to see none the less.

The Good Luck

After a brief viewing of eiffel towers, sphinxes, coliseums an new york land marks it was off to see just how close to yosemite we could get. we knew we could not stay in the park as we did not have a place to stay but we were going to try to get as close as possible. with no booking but an RV we were confident we could stop in good time at a comfortable place 200 miles later and getting dusky we have not seen an RV park for the whole journey, in fact we had seen nothing really other than driving past area 51 where surprisingly there was nothing to see.

by 7.45 we were starting to get a little concerned and headed for an RV park that we had thought we could get to but discounted before we came out to the US. We got there 10 minutes before they closed the office and got the second to last space. Good luck, we slept well that night.

Oh yes we did have a fantastic 5 mile section of bumps on highway 120 that really did feel like a rollercoaster at times, Joe was laughing his head off with his hands in the air for quite a bit of it.

The Bad Luck

The next day, after a pretty robust pancake breakfast, we drove out to see a cowboy ghost village. drove down a dirt track, tried to turn around, got stuck, had to be towed out. bad luck, thats just about all i have to say about that.

A Tale of Two Parks

Yosemite, our fourth national park in the space of 10 days and great expectations. we approached the park from the north driving the toiga pass to out campsite. Really really big and quite inspiring but evidence that it is a busy park came early with every lay by parked up and every car park full. the campsite was enormous and dusty but quite breathtaking. in our camping space we had 3 or 4 pine trees that must have been at least 100 feet tall each. the whole campsite was like this.

we set camp and the next day set off to explore the north of the park. a nice hike up a hill called lemerts dome and then a rewarding swim in the clearest lake i have been in for years, a lovely day and a beautiful park to explore I could have spent a few days there.

Day two we went the south of the park to see the landmark spots of the Half Dome and El Capitan. While impressive they seemed a little dull after the splendour of the previous parks we had been to, also it was really busy with, it seemed, people who were there because it was something to do rather than because they were interested in the place. Its difficult to explain but it had a different feel from the other parks. The day was saved by a drive back to the north of the park and a walk around a grove of simply massive sequoia trees, a magical place.

anyone planning to go to yosemite, I would say stay to the north, its different from the south.

Next up San Francisco, great expectations. Its our first proper city stop, I need buildings, cars, people, shops. I NEED A SHOWER!!!

Zion National Park, established in 1990 and I am sad to say, like Bryce, a place I had not heard of until about 5 months ago….

The drive from Bryce was a mere 2 hours and unremarkable the only point of interest was the fact that we had to have an escort through one of the tunnels because of the vehicle size. This in fact was just a traffic flow management exercise with a ranger simply saying “drive down the middle”

Zion itself is, as you would expect stunning, high peek mountains, sheer cliffs and wildlife galore! Our camp place was place just at the bottom of a pretty big mountain which gave a rewarding view from the bedroom and for the first time we had electricity to plug into, what a luxury.

On our first day we tramped up a river with what I would estimate would have been a couple thousand other people. it was different and even pleasant at times but goodness it was hot, hitting the 40C mark. All of these national parks are serviced by free shuttle buses. they are good and convenient but they do get busy especially in Zion. We ended what was quite a strenuous river walk with wet gritty feet to be met with a queue of people that in the uk would have taken hours to get rid of but here, it was no problem, there was a continuous stream of buses which meant a wait of less than 15 minutes. Thats how you do it!

Day two in Zion and we had an early morning start to go canyoning. Our guides were two young new yorkers who had moved out the capital of canyoning to enjoy life. It was every thing we wanted it to be, fun, challenging , scary and oh yes fun! There was one point when we were talking about extreme sports and mentioned some guy who had recently died doing a wing suit jump in Yosemite. One of the guides mentioned that he had “passed”. This is one of those strange things you encounter with extreme sport people and especially american ones, “passed”? Not being mean but the guy jumped of a very high cliff and misjudged it a little, in my books that is not what I would called “passed”….. Any how absailing walking negotiating tight squeezes and enjoying stunning scenery was all part of the experience. I think the kids enjoyed it too.

The rest of the last day we spent walking through the little town near the campsite stopping for a drink and the hope of wifi. This was our first experience of really bad service YES it does happen here, i was pretty happy to be treated poorly in a restaurant just to be able to say its not all perfect here! how weird.

Next up Yosemite!

Oh yes, some snakes, lizards, big bugs but no lions.

Sitting down getting to know John and Rich gave great first impressions, we were talking about the live wild rattle snake we saw in Bryce canyon, then mum and dad came with our stuff from the RV. We ran through the safety briefing and John said “ok we are ready to go canyoning. A half an hour drive of talking about famous films being filmed in the canyonny dessert planes like the bond film octopussey and the film butch cassedy and the sun dance king. We arrived at our spot got into our harnesses and set of. About half a mile down the path we reached our first obstacle out of 3.5. I know your wondering why .5 but thats because when our instructor started canyoning the second obstacle wasn’t there so he calls it .5. the first obstacle was average, the point five was easy however the last two were really hard because of the soft and slippery sand but despite this the five of us scampered up the sandy steep rock then we had to slow down because of the group in front of us then came the optional obstacle a very tight squeeze where two rocks had broken apart I got almost the very end and stopped I was stuck after two minutes Mae came in to lift me over the small gap but it was next to no use but it inspired mum to come in and help she lifted me over the small gap and i was through! we came to the abseiling and I thought it would be a piece of cake after my PGL trip but no, on PGL the drop was was 20ft however here it was a 45ft drop but after a bit of dangling I got down then on her first ever absele Mae came down then mum at this point Rich said we should go check out the next bit, it was a 5 metre slop and and metre drop then we went some difficult drops out another absele and that was easy. then came to a final tight squeeze and we were done!

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My blog post today you could call a horror story, for me especially, anyway.

We sat on the bus to go to our stop, to our walk, dad handed me the suncream and took of my cap and put it on the floor beside him. The I sun-creamed up and gave it back to dad, at this point our stop came and we got of the bus. I followed mum into the Yosemite gift shop to buy joe a new hat, yes he lost it. We walked out of the shop with joe’s new hat I looked over at joe’s hat and then realised… I’d left my hat on the bus! mum was furious but dad very, very kindly said he’d wait for the our bus to come round again we ‘all’ decided to try climb the hard face to our dome, no not the half dome or el capitan (those are ’to easy’), it was just a dome.

Mae and I walked up to the vertical edge and looked at the veiw then Mae cautiously started to to walk down however I thought different, I sat down and whizzed past Mae on my bottom despite mum warning Joe I was down within seconds as it stood up I put my hands on my hips in triumph as I though I felt there was something different as I i felt the back of my trousers I realised there was no back to my trousers… NOOOO!!! all I could feel was the fabric of my pants and all mum could see was my anonymous green underwear.

So I’d gone from the top with my cap and to the bottom with… my bottom. I hiked all the way up the dome were every time we saw people

I love Switzerland so I will disagree, but that said the northern meadows and granite domes of Yosemite are really stunning. The landscape changes from granite domes, to lush meadow to towering pine forests and back again. We chose to drag the kids on yet another hike, this time up Lembert Dome, with it’s 805ft ascent to the peak, other less patient folks just climb straight up the face. We then rewarded them and us with the afternoon on the beach, at the east end of Tenaya Lake, a huge expanse of crystal clear glacier fed water, and open water swimmer’s delight, not sure Stanborough quite lives up to this.

Day two was a trip down into Yosemite valley, where we would have been staying had we got our original choice, all I can say is that we lucked out. Whilst the valley is home to the most famous landmarks such as El Capitan and Half Dome, after the tranquility of the northern meadows, it seemed hot, dusty and busy. Glad we saw it but not what I will remember Yosemite for.

Well perhaps it was just a brown bear, but it was wild, running through the shrubbery as we passed on the shuttle bus.

Having enjoyed a hearty breakfast of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup, we decided on a detour to Bodie Ghost town. As we approached with 7 miles to go we hit the worst thing possible in a 30ft RV, a dirt road. Sensibly having gone no more than 500 metres we decided to turn back, 2 minutes later we found ourselves grounded in soft sand perpendicular to the road. After nearly half an hour trying to dig us out we decided it was time to call for help – despite a signal, no phone connection and nothing for miles around. Thankfully Bill spotted a house, so off I went. Two lovely ladies on their way out for the day took pity on me and my story and phoned the local pick garage (30 minutes drive away) and convinced them to come out and help. Two hours and more cash than I care to mention we were on the road again, heading away from the dirt track of Bodie and towards Yosemite, a little dirtier and much the wiser – we hope.

In zion we went canyoning and we walked down a river when we went down the river it got really deep and very rocky I fell over the next day we woke up really

early and we went canyoning when we got there I was terrified we got to the mountain and we got started and we went through this path we did lots of

fun things but my favourite thing was assailing we went down the first one and I was terrified you had to been back over a cliff but was really fun.