To farewell the USA, we are spending three nights in San Francisco. We spent the first evening relaxing quietly, as I was still feeling quite sore. I had chicken noodle soup at a downtown diner, and then we went to see “Role Models” because of a cranky looking clip on The Daily Show. We laughed and enjoyed ourselves, and then headed back to our hotel at Union Square.

The next morning I woke up at 5:30 to find some oatmeal from Starbucks, and then we were picked up at 6:30 for our day trip to Yosemite National Park. Designated a World Heritage site in 1984, it is full of grand vistas. The sheer granite cliffs form huge valleys, laced with waterfalls above snow-dusted forests. We saw Bridalveil Falls, El Capitan, a 3 593 foot high granite monolith, and Half Dome, which was never a full dome.

After lunch (I had soup again), we went for an atmospheric walk through Tuolumne sequoia grove. As we were 6 000 feet up, the ground was lightly dusted with snow, and a thick fog enveloped us. The sequoias, the world’s largest living organism, emerged from the mist and towered above us. One fallen giant rested on its side, slowly returning to the soil. We watched a silver belly squirrel carefully pack its nuts into the ground, and spotted a parcel of deer scamper through the long grass.

For dinner I had mashed potatoes with gravy and yogurt. Returning to San Francisco, we stopped beside the Bay Bridge and admired its strings of light leading the way back into the city.