That wasn’t part of the plans today but the weather got the better of us. The day was going to be a long drive ending up in Yosemite.

This was the weather forecast and goodness knows why we assumed anything different.  

We set off from Furnace Creek having gathered vittels for the long 8 hour drive.  We were a bit concerned about the incoming snow but hey, it was over 300 miles away.

This was the tunnel from the hotel to the car park – it really was like The Great Escape.  Would we escape the weather??  The drive through Death Valley, was far longer than we thought taking in once more the phenomenal mountain terrain.

This was our road going off into the distance.  After a few hours it began to snow. This was unexpected as we were only 4 hours into the journey. We stopped for gas and sat in the garage car park, in the falling snow eating the salad we’d picked up earlier.  Sheila was whinging that she’d only brought one pair of long trousers and desperately needed another pair.  Janice had still not taken her coat off and Sue was harangued for promising us a sunny warm holiday.

We took the decision to ring our hotel and suss the situation. That’s when we had a problem. The hotel said they had had, unusual for this time of year, heavy snow. If we were driving we would need chains on our wheels. We had no chains. Hire cars do not allow you to put chains on even if we could find some. Yosemite for the evening was sadly abandoned.

So change of plan. We were heading for Fresno and Sue got on the phone to book us a hotel. Once we arrived and booked in we went to a local shopping centre – Sheila got her warm trackies, (hopefully she’ll stop whinging now).  Then we took ourselves to a Chinese Restaurant and had a lovely meal.   Funny how an unexpected turn of events can still turn out ok. 

Tomorrow we’ll try Yosemite again, snow has stopped there now so we may be lucky. Then it’s on to San Francisco for a glorious 3 night stay.

It should be great if the message inside a prawn cracker at the end of the evening proves to be prophetic!