Quick geology lesson. Yosemite valley was carved from granite by glacial erosion. The result is a valley a mile or so wide and, more impressively, hundreds of metres deep. The valley has gradually filled with earth so that the valley floor is now flat, covered with interspersed meadows and towering redwood forests, and flanked by sheer granite cliffs.
Curry Village (named after some explorer type bloke) is a collection of tents and huts nestled at the foot of Glacier peak. The setting is truly awesome - it's hard to describe the feeling of wandering out of your tent, glancing up and seeing a 1000m high cliff in front of you. It really does take take your breath away.
After dropping our bags in our tent (and stashing all food in a special box down the path so we don't wake up to find a bear trying to climb into bed) we headed over to the bar for some pizza and a beer. Being Saturday night the place was heaving with week-enders from San Francisco, so after failing to find a table to sit at we did a very un-English thing and asked some complete strangers if we could sit with them.
This turned out to be one of the best decisions of the holiday so far. They were a group of, as Amy put it, 'proper Americans' who insisted on giving us free drinks. The conversation went something like "Hi, how are ya? I'm John. Have a beer. Ah heck, have a shot. Have a shot and a beer. Where are you from?.. Oh, England. That's great, I love Europe. Have another beer."
Needless to say we had a great evening. Lets just hope the bears aren't attracted to the smell of alcohol.
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