We had a 3.00am wake up call to leave for our flight at 6.00am. Quite a thing to get through security as the Americans don’t leave anything to chance, shoes off, body scan and they even tested my cameras for explosives residue. Our flight via Los Angeles to Fresno took 6 hours which is almost an international flight in itself! California is 3 hours behind NY time ,so I had another time difference to adjust to. I was fascinated by the vast kilometres of crops laid out in endless squares on the flight to Fresno. This is the Central Valley and is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, stretching some 720 km from north to south and is between 60 and 100km wide. It is all irrigated by an extensive system of reservoirs and canals which are fed by drainage systems to the north in the Sacramento Valley. Most of the fruit and vegetables grown in the USA are produced here.
Fresno was dry and hot. We collected our hire car and then Kirsty had to get to grips with driving an automatic on the right hand side of the road. She did admirably well! We stopped in for groceries before driving on to Oakhurst, which was a few kilometres from Yosemite Park and then to our accommodation which was situated in huge groves of sugar pine trees and was very quiet and peaceful. We settled in for the remainder of the day and had a barbecue on the veranda outside. I was amazed at the size of the sugar pine cones!
