What is with Australia's internet?

Holy cow, how do Australians handle their useless internet?  I never appreciated it before (since living in Australia you don't realise how good other countries have it).  But being in the UK has accustomed me to being able to buy anything I want online, simply and quickly.

As it's coming into Christmas time I thought I would start getting the presents in order for people back in Australia.  I open up three electronics stores websites, two don't even load and the third refuses to actually let me put anything in my basket.  I had to give up in disgust.  And these are electronics stores, supposedly up on new technologies and things.

Australians, rise up in protest! You can't let this state of affairs continue.  It's embarrassing for one thing.  And secondly how am I ever going to send anyone presents back in Oz?

Yosemite Valley

Unbelievable views of half dome and the valley along the route

We did a walk in the valley, which is really the main tourist location in the Yosemite national park.  For those who have been following the news, Yosemite was featured quite a lot recently because of an outbreak of Hantavirus, which has a 30% mortality rate.  For a while authorities couldn't work out where it was coming from.  They managed to narrow it down to a few cabins in a particular campsite.  The carriers are deer mice, and they were living in the double walls of these cabins.  There sure were a lot of deer around, so I can only assume that there are an equally large number of deer mice hanging out too.

Some of the many deer in the park - they were pretty mangy too

Non-existent lower Yosemite falls - you have to use your imagination

It feels very much like a resort in Yosemite valley, you are encouraged not to drive around, but instead use the free shuttles.  There is a grocery store, and library, and post office there.  But no one really lives there, and the thousands of people you see are either camping in one of the designated campsites or in one of the hotels.  Walking around at dusk it felt almost like being in a resort in Thailand, it just had that same atmosphere, everyone there was obviously on holiday.

Ground squirrel - masquerading as a chipmunk - the cutest rodent ever, with a piece of Dave's apple core

No water here

At first we were planning just a walk along the valley floor, there are a lot of waterfalls and things to see, but then it quickly became clear that you could just drive (or catch the shuttle bus) between all these stops.  And it wasn't so fun just walking alongside the road.  So at the first opportunity we changed our plan to instead scale the cliffs and walk to Upper Yosemite falls instead.  It was well worth the plan change, even though we were seriously lacking in both food and water and both only wearing sneakers, which made for a sketchy descent in some parts.

It wasn't a very long walk, in terms of horizontal distance, but the vertical distance was a bit of a killer, more than 800m over only 6kms.  The last third is tough, endless switch-backs, with the sun blazing straight down on you, and no breeze since the trail is climbing a cleft between two ridges.  Let's just say it was nice to reach the top of the cliff at that point.  At the top of the falls you are at almost 2000m, which is again so incredible to me.  That sounds like it should be alpine, and yet it was incredibly hot and you were surrounded by pine trees and I was in shorts, desperate for a drink.

The dry, dry upper Yosemite Falls, you can kind of see where the water falls - this is halfway up the climb

Enjoying the view at the top

I wonder how many rescues have to be performed during the summer though.  The walks all seem incredibly tough, in that they all have some climb in the 100s of metres and yet it can be so hot.  And Yosemite has to be one of the more popular parks in the US.  When we were climbing up we certainly passed some people in distress, looked like some sort of heat exhaustion.  I don't know which is worse, heat or cold.  I mean with cold you can wear more clothes, but with heat it's hard to combat, especially with no water, and it was dry as a bone up there.  I was kind of hoping since we were walking to upper Yosemite falls that there would be somewhere to dip my hat along the way.  All there was were distant, dried up ponds, not a trickle coming over the falls.  You could see where the water would go if it was running, but not as impressive as after the winter snow melts.

Cannot get enough of that view - Dave at the top of the falls

Me with the sheer cliff faces, we climbed up the ridge to the left

This trail is apparently one of the oldest in the park, being built by 1877, which is quite impressive when you see the terrain it has to climb up.  The falls themselves are one of the largest in the world, coming in at number 7, and the highest in the US.  I'm not sure how this is measured though, since the falls actually consists of the Upper, Middle and Lower Yosemite falls, and the total drop is taken as the combined fall of all three of these.

Not only did we finish with an unbelievable view, but we also got some pretty cool fauna that day.  We saw the mangy deer (least impressive), chipmunk-type ground squirrel, stellar jay, they kind of look like a prettier jackdaw, with more iridescent feathers, but one of the best was a woodpecker.  We actually got to see it pecking at a tree, and because we had our binoculars with us (what self-respecting birder wouldn't) we got to see it fairly close up.  It had chosen a tree quite close to a hotel though, so people walking past probably thought we were spying on the hotel guests.  I wanted to point out the woodpecker to them, but they didn't have binoculars, loser non-birders.

What can I say - I can't get enough of that view!

Looking across to Glacier Point - where we had been the day before

The walk started at camp 4, which is one of the designated campsites in the valley, it was packed when we walked through.  It looked like a major mecca for rock climbers, they were all over the place.  The rangers were fairly insistent on anti-bear measures.  All food had to be in these massive bear-proof containers, they were like small shipping containers.  I wonder just how many bears they get in these campsites.  Even with those precautions there must be heaps of bears around, just looking at the numbers of squirrels feeding off the humans.  That would be a scary sight, walking up in the night to find a bear prowling around.  Apparently if the rangers see one in the campsites they let off fireworks to try and scare the thing to death, or at least to never returning.

Dave - savouring the top

The incredible cliff faces we walked alongside

One of the main people who really pushed for the creation of Yosemite National Park was John Muir, they have all these little monuments to him all over the park.  Dave and I were in Glasgow the other week, and while we were there we learned that this John Muir was actually a Scot, born near Edinburgh.  He lived in Yosemite for 3 years, eventually returning to civilisation and getting married.  Must have been a strange 3 years, I don't think there was a grocery store, or library when he was living here.

The surprising greenery at the top of the climb.  This was a welcome relief after the endless switchbacks

The view of Lower Yosemite falls - you can just see a smear of water - we walked to the very top of the cliffs

Half-Dome is fairly impressive

Dave in the hot, hot sun

The tiny pools at the top of the falls

Looking down to the valley floor

Walking from Dolgalleu

The estuary and the hills of Snowdonia beyond

We went for a walk/run from Dolgellau in northern Wales, we had been half hoping to do one in Snowdonia, but torrential rain and gale-force winds kind of put paid to that, I had packed for a wedding after all, not an ordeal!

Instead we did something much more sedate, a 15km run from Dolgellau out to Barmouth harbour. It was a great day for it, perfect temperatures.  But again, as we had packed for a wedding, we weren't really kitted out.  Which meant a few moments when I was thirstier than I would have liked. I know, who would have thought in an area as wet as north Wales.

Old bridge over the river

Dave in the Welsh bush

You follow the Mawddach Trail along the estuary to the coast at Barmouth, where you then cross the river mouth on a railway bridge.  This is a disused railway line, which closed in 1969, it used to take Victorian holiday makers to Barmouth as well as carrying slate from quarries in the nearby area.

Dolgellau is slightly famous for having had a large Quaker population following a visit by George Fox.  Though I don't think there are many Quakers living there now.  When we reached Barmouth we discovered a country and western festival going on in the middle of town, which really isn't something you would expect in a tiny Welsh village.  We didn't stay long, people were giving Dave funny looks in his running gear.  I have read in the free newspapers here that a surprisingly large number of people don't like running because they don't like being seen in shorts.  That's got to be one of the weakest reasons for not running I think I've heard.  But perhaps it explains the funny looks  Dave was getting, what with the shorts.

Very pretty estuary

I'll just leave you with some photos, it was a lovely excursion, and a nice change in the weather following the absolute bucketing we had the day before.

Old farmhouses across the water

The pretty trail - easy going really.  You can see the old railway posts on the right

Weird squirrel-like creature

Sheep with wet hooves

The sandy railway to Barmouth

Crossing the bridge next to the railway 

Pretty harbour of Barmouth

The main street in Barmouth

Would not have expected that in the middle of Barmouth

Really Bloomberg?

I have moved desks at work, so I now have a clear, uninterrupted view of Bloomberg playing constantly.  For those who may not know this is a financial news station on TV.  And what with the hurricane hitting New York they are going a little crazy (NYC being a massive financial hub and all).  The coverage of hurricane Sandy is literally on all day, but really there is not that much to cover, particularly not with a financial spin.  Seriously there was a ten minute piece today about the 45 minute wait for a coffee at a particular cafe, and the only footage they had was the CCTV camera from inside the store.  That's what I call hard-hitting journalism,

I mean I know it's caused massive amounts of damage and people have died (particularly in the Caribbean, not that you'd know since they only got like 10 minutes a couple of days ago).  The way Bloomberg was carrying on though you would think it was end of days or something.

Glacier Point

Half Dome and Yosemite National Park

After visiting Mariposa Grove we were kind of thinking, hey Yosemite is pretty good, the trees are pretty amazing, but we were wondering where the wow factor was.  I mean this place was like the second National Park in the world right, there's gotta be something pretty special for that to have happened right.  And I mean big trees are kind of cool, but second National Park in the world cool?  Hmmm I think not.

But then we went for a drive out to the end of Glacier Pt road and we got our answer.  This was one of the first touristy view points in the Valley, and standing there I can see why.  I don't really need to say much, I think the photos speak for themselves, outstanding!

Dave with half dome

Probably the most famous feature in the National Park is Half-Dome, to climb it you need to get a permit.  Apparently you can do it in a day, it's a 1400m elevation gain, and you have to climb the last 400m holding onto chains.  The whole time we were in the park we never saw anyone on the top  of the rock though, so I'm not sure if the top is actually a fair way back from the edge or what, or maybe our binoculars weren't as strong as we thought they were.

Looking down to Yosemite Valley, we climbed to the top of the escarpment the next day

Three arches at Yosemite Valley

Yet another wonderful view

Best Museum Ever?

Well maybe not, that is a big call after all, but we went to a museum on Saturday that has to be up there as one of the better ones I've visited.  It is rated #24 of #1270 attractions in London on tripadvisor, so surely that's got to count for something, though number one is the Olympic Stadium, so perhaps take that with a grain of salt.  On a side note, really I don't know who reviews things on tripadvisor because come on, a stadium, that's the best London has to offer??

Anyway the museum is housed in the Royal College of Surgeons, the building is still in use, but the museum is across 2 floors in a section of the building.  It is named after John Hunter, the man who started the collection, he came to London in 1748 from a town near Glasgow.  At that time surgeons didn't have to go to university, unlike physicians, which is why surgeons are called Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms.  It sounded like John Hunter was basically a body snatcher, who used the corpses to study anatomy and various things.  It seemed that he started the museum and had people in one day a week partly so that they would see that he wasn't trying to create some sort of Frankenstein monster.  I'm guessing because the collection is so old it contains things that perhaps couldn't be exhibited/collected nowadays.

They had the skeleton of an "Irish giant", Charles Byrne, who was 2.31m tall.  His express wish was that his skeleton not be displayed after death, and for that reason he wanted to be buried at sea, but John Hunter paid £500 after he died to get his hands on the body.  It's nice to see that the museum is following the British tradition of ignoring the wishes of those people most affected by the exhibits.

What the museum was mainly full of though was just bits of bodies, animal or human.  It was kind of cool to see the affect different diseases had on the bones.  So with rickets you could see the bones were all twisted.  There were also an awful lot of syphilitic bones in there, it looked like syphilis was pretty prevalent back then.  You could see the affect of the lesions on the skull, I guess it's no surprise people went crazy, looking at it's affect on the skull.  The fractures were pretty cool too, you could see where the bone had desperately tried to fuse together, but you're looking at it wondering how painful that must have been to use.

It wasn't just bones though, there was also a lot of jars containing soft tissue too, and I won't get too graphic but there were definitely a number of foetuses, as you would hope for in such a place.

There was also a great section on the history of surgery, how in the past good surgeons could do leg amputations in under a minute, no anaesthetic after all.  Then it moved into the era where people started to realise about germs and keeping wounds clean.  It then moved into another really graphic era around the first world war, where cosmetic surgery really started to get going.  The reason this was the dawn of this branch of surgery is that the soldiers fighting in the wars around that time started to suffer from horrific facial injuries, we're talking no face.  And yes there were 3D pictures.  They need to put those pictures up next to the cool tanks when recruiting kids to the army, because seriously if you were 18 and someone showed you a 3D picture of a guy without a face, and said that could be you, I'm wondering if we would turn into a nation of pacifists overnight.

The final, awesome, part of the museum was that they had a couple of videos on various surgeries.  We got to see heart bypass surgery, it starts and the chest has already been cut open, and you just see the heart beating.  It was unbelievable, the doctor is literally holding this persons beating heart.  I would go back to the museum just to watch the rest of the movies.  There was one on brain surgery that we didn't get to see.

If slightly macabre, but incredibly interesting things are what you like then definitely pay this place a visit, and even better is that it's free.  I love London museums.

Mariposa Grove - or the Land of the Big Trees

A giant redwood

Another thing which was a bit of a must-see whilst we were in San Francisco were the giant Redwoods.  Dave really wanted to see them, I don't know, maybe he feels an affinity to ridiculously tall things.  So after 3 days of the city we were in our hire car and off to Yosemite National Park. It was a bit of a drive there, ended up being 4 hours.  And the highways are completely insane!  The car is definitely king in this land.  The highways were packed the whole way out, and that's 10 lanes of dual carriage-way.  I gotta say these 10 lanes weren't particularly well-maintained either.

It was so nice to get out to Yosemite, beautiful skies every day, unbelievable views, awesome flora and freaky fauna.  What more can you ask for, plus I saw a coyote on the way there.  That was cool, so classically American, standing in a field of yellow grass, with rolling hills behind it.  That was pretty special.

It was Memorial Day weekend, but luckily we got there before the weekend started and left again on the Saturday, so we were definitely travelling in the right direction going there and coming back.  The queue to get in on the Saturday looked painful.

Dave with the National Park "tram"

Dave with a ridiculously big tree

One weird thing was that if you were in the military you got to go in for free, it didn't seem as if that was something particular to Yosemite (perhaps some historical reason), but it seems that case for all National Parks.  I couldn't really figure out why that is, I mean the military and the National Parks Service don't seem like natural bedfellows to me.  Just look at the surroundings once there's been military intervention somewhere, not generally somewhere on the top of the list as a place of great natural beauty.

One thing I didn't appreciate about Yosemite was how high it is, the carpark was at 1700m, then the highest point, Wawona Vista, was at 2075m, which is not all that much lower than My Kosciuszko.  Let's just say the difference in the surroundings was dramatic.  On top of Mt Kosciuszko you are very much in alpine territory, and there's definitely a chill to the air.  Here the sun was beating down, I was in shorts and there were massive pine trees all around me.

Unusual squirrel in the grove

Redwoods amongst normal pines

I would definitely recommend making the trek to the upper part of the park, as a whole Mariposa Grove is a massively popular place to visit, but there are far fewer people who make it to the upper reaches. And they are mainly the people on the tram, who don't venture far from the road.  Though when I say tram I actually mean massive truck.  Only in the US would you find a lorry pulling tourists through the nature.

It felt as if the lower part of the park was full of the blockbuster trees, the ones which had names, and I guess these were the famous trees which people hear about when they are children.  The upper part, didn't have as many named trees, but I actually think it was nicer.  It was cooler for one, and it seemed a bit more lush, less burnt out than the lower down parts.

Away from the "tram" stops there were heaps of redwoods and hardly any people in the upper elevations.  And the redwoods really are red, it's not some slight reddish tinge, but a real glow.  It's hard to describe, or capture in a photo, but they are mixed in with these other, normal, pine trees and they really stood out.  There weren't heaps of them, which made it even better I think, because everywhere you looked you were reminded of the contrast between what had, up to that point, been quite large pine trees, and these monsters.

As a comparison to Kauris, the biggest trees I had seen up to that point, the Kauris have a comparable trunk diameter, but the redwoods are almost twice as tall.  And they sure were tall.

Evidence of fire

Walking through the hole in the tree

There was certainly evidence of how people in the past struggled with the concept of conservationism.  And you wonder if we have got it right now either, just because of what people were doing in the park only fairly recently.  Mariposa Grove became a National Park in 1890 and at the time it seemed like National Parks were early versions of theme parks.  People went round cutting holes in a few of the trees, big enough so that waggons or cars could drive through them.  Obviously this wasn't so good for the trees and eventually they would fall down.

It is a bit different now, most of the trees have fences round them, keeping the hordes of their shallow root systems.  And certainly no more cutting holes in trees.

The giant sequoias need fire in order to grow, they need the lack of competition to get their start when they are seedlings, the adult ones have such thick bark that they are impervious to the fire, whilst the other trees don't really stand a chance.  Once the grove came under federal protection they were finding there weren't many redwood seedlings around any more.  This was because they had stopped the wildfires, and the normal pines were out-competing the little seedlings.  Looking around on our visit though it seems that have either re-started controlled burning, or there was a particularly brutal wildfire through this area recently.

Dave with an over sized pine cone - but not from the redwoods surprisingly

There was an awful lot of wildlife around the park, I guess there are a lot of people to feed off.  There were so many squirrels, but they weren't the normal grey squirrels you get in London.  I kind of thought there was only one type of squirrel in America, but actually there are heaps.  I guess the red squirrel is lucky only one type of squirrel made the trek across the ocean.  Whilst we were in California we actually didn't once see the traditional grey squirrel.  Mostly we saw ground squirrels, like the one in the photo above, but we also saw Douglas fir squirrels and golden-mantled ground squirrels, which looked almost exactly like chipmunks.  They were definitely my favourite.  No bears, maybe that's a fortunate thing, but we saw a bunch of birds, including a goshawk, which was my favourite of the birds, just hovering, looking for chipmunk-type squirrels I guess.

The view from Wawona Vista - where we saw the goshawk

The meadow near the museum

Up the top of the park there is this lodge, which is now a bit of a museum, this is the final stop of the tram, so the ranger up there sits around waiting for the tram to arrive.  Everyone gets off, and he gives a quick 5 minute spiel about the trees, people pick up a bit of a bark, and handle a pine cone, then it's back on the tram.

They had chosen the location of the lodge well, in perhaps my favourite part of this park, in a grassy meadow, surrounded by massive redwoods.  When there wasn't a tram in, it was really peaceful.

I'll leave you with a few more pictures, mainly of trees, so if you don't like trees, the story ends here.

The Bachelor and the Three Graces - all the truly large trees had special names

Me with old grizzly, the most famous tree in the park, I'm sitting about 20m in front of it, 1800 years old, and the second biggest tree in the park, at 64m tall.

Dave with a regulation redwood - no special name here

The track to the upper section - this middle section had no redwoods - I don't know why 

How red is that tree!

More redwoods standing guard around the museum 

Dave in shorts at 2000m

Redwoods next to normal trees

The cute little museum - hopefully not made from redwood