Mammoth Lakes

So,
We hopped in the car on Sunday and headed up to mammoth lakes to do some camping. It was a good time had by all up until the last day. (more on that later) This was popo's first camping trip and we all discovered that he likes to bark at everything when he is unsure (which was a lot) so he got his behind kicked a couple times for being an exceptionally loud pansy. I swore to the beard and the lady that I would help them break him of this. For some reason he gets nervous when not in his normal circumstances and acts like a chihuahua (yip,yip,yip). We didn't know this before this camping trip so now we are all going to take him out to unusual circumstances a little more often and break him of this.


ANYWAYS.....

we found a sweet site next to a creek in the Coldwater Creek campground about 9,000ft up. Lots of shade and super cold nights. We set up on the first day and planned our activities.



our site had this weird eagle head shaped tree in it that the lady swore was going to cast weird shadows at night and scare her...



We failed to realize just how cold the nights were going to be @9,000ft and we slept rather poorly the first night. Nevertheless, upon waking the next morning we set out on a hike to TJ lake. We had seen that all of the drive up lakes were really pretty...


but very crowded despite what the pictures look like.

The beard was threatening a mountain skinny dip (camp bath so to speak) so we figured a hike on a Monday morning would suffice to spare the public.

We set off...



This was the first lake we saw called lake George...



It was cool but still housed a ton of fishermen. We continued on. Little did we know (the brochure failed to mention) the hike was going to be straight up! seriously! within minutes we discovered ourselves up above the previous lake.



Another couple of minutes and we were there.



It was pretty sweet; nobody around, the beard brought a swimsuit, and the water wasn't too bad. The sweet smelling lady and I showed popo how to try the water first.



we spent quite a while there. The beard swam (clothed). we cooled off and headed back.

We went into town to check things out that night.... not much going on in Mammoth during the summer I suppose. Went to sleep with a few more layers on and looked forward to the next day.


The next morning we all felt like this:



especially mama. The night before we had had a nice long campfire and went to bed. things were so cold that she didn't drink enough water because she didn't want to have to get up in the middle of the night and hike to the bathroom. This was a bad idea at 9,000 ft. She woke up the next morning suffering from what was either altitude sickness or dehydration. We tried to give it a go, get her some food and rest and see if she could make it. She couldn't. The beard broke down camp and we all took the long drive home a day early.

Oh well we all had a really good time and the place was amazing. Mama feels better now and she tells me that they are off to jet ski next week while we hang with b-trouble and h-bomb.

until the next time remember to drink lots of fluids!

SAM