Months of healthy clean living has finally taken it's toll on me and I have come down with tonsilitis, I knew all that fresh air couldn't be good for me. Needless to say, I am milking my situation for maximum sympathy from Eoin. Tonsilitis is very tiring though, I can only walk a few blocks without needing a chocolate brownie pick-me-up - I say you have to listen to your body and if it's a raspberry cream cheese swirl chocolate brownie it wants, it's a raspberry cream cheese swirl chocolate brownie it gets.
We're in Seattle - it seems pretty nice here but I'm feeling too lazy to see much of it, there is lots of water here and lots of Starbucks. After our double bed in a dorm horror in Hawaii, I couldn't stomach the idea of another hostel so we've gone posh at the "Executive Hotel Pacific", love it! I was just about to say that there are less nutters here than in San Francisco when some fruitcake called Dave with filthy glasses on came over and wouldn't stop talking to me about his mother and I had to leave the cafe.
Last three National Parks
So, anyway, in the last couple of weeks we went to stay in our last three National Parks. Yosemite gets all the hype and it is beautiful - at this time of year all the waterfalls are going with full force and this winter they had exceptional snow fall so they really were amazing. We went hiking on our first day there - we didn't really read about the hike properly and foolishly ignored the people in waterproof ponchos and ended up on the Mist Trail. Well, mist is one way you could describe it, or you could more accurately call it the You Are Going to Get Drenched Trail. We finished it looking like drowned rats after walking for about quarter of a mile through the phenomenal spray from the waterfall.
King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks aren't too far south of Yosemite, again, gorgeous places and we saw the largest living thing on earth, a tree called General Sherman, see photos and try to pick out the tiny people round the bottom. Sorry, as Eoin corrects me Father Ted style, they are not small, just far away.
Bear Country
All these National Parks are bear country and this time we were camping. Apparently, there are no grizzly bears in California, just black bears which are less threatening. This distinction didn't really comfort me much, to be honest, I'm even scared of some of the more aggressive squirrels round here.
If you camp in bear country you are not allowed to store any food or toiletries or anything with a scent (mosquito repellent, lipstick etc) inside your car or tent, you have to lock it in a bear proof metal box or the bears will break into your car. Luckily, the bears can't have smelt the Italian sausage that had rolled under the passenger seat without us noticing. You can scare them off by shouting or banging pots and pans together, hence for the nine nights we spent camping in bear country, I religiously brought my carefully selected pot and pan lid into the tent to sleep with. I am glad to report that the nine nights passed without incident, though I swear I heard one run past the tent one night. Oh, and there was the night when I woke up and thought Eoin was a bear but I wasn't feeling together enough to bang my pots and pans at him.
Drinking
It turns out that one of Eoin's college mates, Jive, has been living in San Francisco the whole time we've been in America so we turned up as his place for a weekend. We went to watch an Ireland / New Zealand rugby match and then out on the town...it's been so long since we've been out that late, it took us a couple of days to get over it. Great night though, I seem to remember thowing some rather impressive shapes on the dancefloor, though no one else seems to even remember the dance floor.
The Tent
Two more poles snapped in as many days in Yosemite and then, fittingly, one more went on our last night. Poxy tent, I was all for burying it in the woods somewhere but Jive has taken it off our hands. I just hope he has better pole karma than we do.
That's it...tomorrow we head off to Vancouver and then we're home for a bit. Really looking forward to it, though I will miss America a little bit. People think I speak like Princess Diana here, I do feel very exotic with my fancy British accent.
