Yosemite National Park

The massive granite blocks on both sides of Yosemite Valley were amazing:

We had a brilliant day, we drove through the park and stopped and admired the scenery regularly!

But we spent so long making sure we had everything in the car that baby Olive could possibly need that we both forgot all our warm and waterproof clothes, Pete didn't even have a coat! We tried to hike to a waterfall viewpoint, but the mist was like torrential rain, so we didn't get very far!

We knew it wasn't very promising when it started hailing on us in the car park, but we walked to the bottom of Yosemite falls, there was snow on the ground and we were freezing! 

By the time we got to the bottom of the falls, we were both cold and wet!

We caught the bus around the valley and Yosemite Village, but there was an accident with a cyclist and we ended having to change buses and it took forever. When we finally got back to our car we found we had accidentally left the boot wide open in our rush to get out of the hail. It had been left open in the car park with all our luggage and valuables inside, for about 2 hours but luckily nothing had been touched!

Arriving in US

Despite Pete setting his alarm for 2 50am, and us having spent all week planning, it was still a mad dash for us to catch our flight. We panicked when uber wouldn't work and wondered if we were mad sat in Bristol coach station in the early hours of the morning with more luggage than we could carry. 

But the flight was awesome, it was the first British Airways service to ever fly to Oakland, the flight was empty, the staff were great and the baby slept for most of the journey. There was a welcoming committee, complete with Union Jack and a film crew!

We were delighted when our last piece of luggage arrived onto the carousel. It didn't arrive with the other luggage, someone had already been to check the hold and we were sat discussing what paperwork needed to be filled out and how long it was likely to take!

We picked up our hire car and gave ourselves one night in Oakland to recover. Chicken and waffles was our first taste of America and noisy Amtrak trains running down the main road outside the hotel!