Dave in America

Had the best time in Yosemite national park. Its a stunningly beautiful area with impressive granite rock formations and masses of pine forest. We got out and did a few walks, one on the 'mist trail', getting soaked walking up past a couple of waterfalls on the Merced river; the second to Glacier Point, a hardcore four mile climb up a mountain rewarded with stunning views across the valley. On our last day we hired a raft and rowed our way down the river for a few miles, stopping off at beaches to chill out, and at bridges to jump off into the freezing cold water! Could have spent so much longer in Yosemite, we met people who'd been going there every year for their whole lives and still found new things to do there, its a wonderful place.

LA was loads of fun. A very touristy experience, we visited Hollywood, and got very excited about the names of stars in the pavement, and their footprints in the concrete. We also spent a day at universal studios, seeing film sets and riding on rollercoasters, and checked out Venice Beach. Another stand-out experience from LA has to be the Greyhound station, which more closely resembled a homeless night shelter, and left us with the distinct feeling that we were lucky to escape! That said, both the Greyhound to LA and from LA on to Yosemite were on time, maybe they're not so bad afterall!

Although the Grand Canyon was amazing, the real highlight of the time in Flagstaff was visiting the nearby state park of Sedona. This is an area of amazing red sandstone and green forests, and we spent a day there hiking and swimming in the rivers. We did the hike first, a knackering treck up to cathedral rock, which is one of the impressive lumps of uneroded sandstone that are dotted around the park. It was unbelievably hot, so having climbed back down the hill, we headed for a couple of spots by the river to swim and cool off. At the second of these was a 30 ft high cliff off of which people were jumping into the river below. Not really sure what came over me, Mike and Matt, but we decided to give it ago, and it genuinely was terrifying, it was such a big drop that as I fell I had a lot of time to think about just how incredibly stupid I was being, and just how little I could do about it! The video footage, taken with much style by Beth, tells the story much better than I can.

The point of going to Flagstaff was as a base to visit the Grand Canyon, which was awesome! We went on a tour with the hostel, and stopped at various points around the canyon to admire the view, which was very impressive. Its just so big, not really just one canyon but loads of them interlinking, so deep you can't see the bottom, and so wide you can't make out any detail on the other side. We did a short hike part of the way down into the canyon, which was a lot of fun except for the fact that the path that had seemed very easy to walk on the way down, became a rather tiring effort on the way back up! Californian Condors and massive ravens circled round overhead all day, and thunderstorms rattled around overhead, it was a very atmospheric, unforgettable experience.

Getting from Albuquerque to our next destination, Flagstaff, was again a nightmare, huge delays with no explanation as to what was going on. The busses are driving us crazy!