Alarm was set for 8am. Bliss. A lie in at last.

The kind person in our room before us was clearly waking at 6am, cos the alarm went off dead on the hour. Excellent. Having worked out how to kill the thing we drifted back to sleep expecting another 120 minutes (or more if the snooze button was deployed).

Nope. 6.30am Mr & Mrs Loud and their sons Decibel and Noise decided to let loose. It was like a zoo had moved in next door complete with stampeding elephants and raucous hyenas. Bless the little darlings.

Managed to stay in bed till about 8.20, then we hit the cafeteria for breakfast. Can someone explain why they aren't able to make scrambled eggs with actual eggs? Why does everything come out of a packet???!!! Did have some scrummy blueberry pancakes though, so it wasn't all bad.

Then we set out for a day of hiking. Well, sort of. My feet have kind of recovered, but are still a bit sore, so we'd picked a couple of fairly easy walks. It was a long drive to the first trail and we set off to see Taft Point - elevation 7,500 feet and comes complete with a 3,000 ft sheer drop off the edge of the cliff into the valley. Or that's what the book says. We'll have to believe it because by the time we reached it there was heavy fog and we couldn't see one foot past the edge, never mind 3,000. Still, we got some pretty cool photos of funny rocks and tree stumps on the way, so it wasn't a complete waste. On the way back it started snowing too - pretty lightly, but it was snow nonetheless. How mad when just 2 days ago we were standing in the baking heat of Death Valley.

The next walk was in Mariposa Grove which is home to some enormous Giant Sequoias - these things can grow for 3,000 years and they're seriously huge!!! We took a gentle walk up to see:

# The Bachelor and Three Graces: A group of four trees, three of them growing very close together, with a fourth a little more distant. Their roots are so intertwined that if one of them were to fall, it would likely bring the others along with it.
# The Grizzly Giant: The oldest tree in the grove.
# The California Tunnel Tree: Cut in 1895 to allow coaches to pass through it (and as a marketing scheme to attract visitors to the grove), this is the only living tree with a tunnel in it since the fall of the Wawona Tunnel Tree in 1969.

My feet were hurting by this point, so Grumpy went ahead to find the Wawona Tunnel Tree - it fell over in 1969 but is still something of an attraction. He should have been about 30 minutes, but he was actually gone for well over an hour (he got lost). In the meantime I did 34 good deeds, taking pics of people as they posed next to the California Tunnel Tree. I think I met people from just about every continent! It was blooming freezing though - by the time G came back I had my jacket done up tight, gloves on, thermal leggings wrapped around my neck and Ralliart hat pulled right down over my ears. What a sight!!! It was also raining so the mile or so walk back to Eddie was pretty grim!

I defrosted in the car on the hour long journey back - it was still raining pretty heavily all the way back. Had to park miles from our room, and you can't leave anything that bears might go for in your car. That trip was fun!!! Had dinner in the same place. Tonight's waitress was a bit bonkers - she took the order for G's wine, charged us for it but never actually gave it to him! Now that's what I call service - not!!! She did sort the bill out without too much fuss though!

So tomorrow morning we pack up and head for San Francisco again - got maybe 24 hours there, and gonna try and meet up with the others for a meal. Hannah is scouting out the best shops so I can do those quickly, and G is trying to persuade me to go out on bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge. After 2 weeks of hectic holidaying, I dunno if I have it in me!!! We'll definitely be coming back though, so maybe we can do it next time.

Not looking forward to the jetlag when we get home, especially as my birthday party is 24 hours after we land and I have a birthday cake to make yet!! Eeeeek!!! Maybe I'll just make sure everyone is fed and watered (or wined) and then get some zeds in. Have to see how it goes.