Sentinel Bridge

After a quick breakfast we packed the cars and set off, stopping to pick up a bear canister and a collapsible chair for me. I was in the electric car with Chris and Laura was with Meg. It was a hot day already and would get hotter by the time we got to Yosemite.

The drive itself was quite dull, as most freeway/motorway drives are. Once we got away from the city the landscape changed and was for the most part quite flat. We seemed to drive from one town to the next for a few hours, but it was difficult to tell when one town ended and another began, they all just seemed to merge into one another. Most of what you could see from the highway was commercial advertising. One distinctive feature - or lack thereof - was the lack of a skyline. Town after town there were almost no buildings above one storey high. I guess that is the result of having plenty of land to build on, there's no need to go high if you can spread out. The other main feature of the journey was roadworks.

I found Chris easy to chat to, and when we lapsed into silence it was comfortable. I could sense that Chris was anxious about being able to recharge the car - on this trip I learned a lot about the difficulties and stress of going on a long journey in an electric car. We stopped at a town called Atwater, there was a charging station there and it was available and it was working! There was a huge Target store there so we went in to get a few supplies, it was a huge store, my first time in a Target, so famous we have even heard of it in Scotland. There was a fast food place near the charging station called The Habit, I'm not a big fan of fast food but then our experience in Scotland is mostly MacDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried. I have to say that The Habit was nothing like them, the food was really good and not expensive, the place was clean and the staff were friendly.

Recharged and refuelled (see what I did there) we set off once more. As we got closer to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range the landscape changed again. We drove through rolling hills and small towns that looked like sets for old western movies. the winding roads through the foothills seemed to go on forever until the hills got larger and suddenly we were out of the foothills and into the mountains, and then Yosemite Valley.

The Valley is about 7 miles long and between a half-mile to a mile wide. The Merced River runs through the valley and was flowing fast. We eventually made it into the Village in the Valley, which was a surprise. I hadn't realised that people actually lived here, there was a store, a garage, a post office, cafés etc., I was not expecting to see so much activity. I also had not expected to see hundreds of tourists.

We were having dinner at the Awana, a posh, expensive hotel that the queen once stayed at. I think it was built at the beginning of the 20th century, it certainly had the look. A young couple, Ethan and Hannah, joined us for dinner, they would be hiking with us, they seemed very nice. The food was excellent, as was the company.

We could probably have stayed longer but we had to get the tents set up, so after availing ourselves of the toilets (it would be a few days before we would see them again), we made our way to the campsite where we would be spending our first night. The campsite had composting toilets, complete with swarms of flies.

A word about bear canisters, it's basically a plastic tub with a screw on lid. Bears have an amazing sense of smell and so you have to put all your food, toiletries, medicines etc. into it. The bears can still smell it but apparently they know from experience that they can't get into them. The bear cage is basically a big metal box with a bear-proof lock that you store the bear canisters in

The tent was easy enough to set up under Meg's expert tutelage. The campsite was busy as expected, mostly with young people but it wasn't noisy

It had been a long day, and once we had packed our bear canisters and put them into the bear cage, we said goodnight and went to our tents.Read more