Camparama

I'm a little embarrassed at the sheer quantity of photos in this post but as Greg told me, "Hey, people love pictures." This will be my second tier about our vast vacation. Our crazy camping trip to Mammoth Lakes, CA. We used to camp here all the time when we were little but we haven't been back in a long time (since right before my mission). Some things were the same and some things of course were very different since now both me and my little brother have families and kids. There are so many geologic points of interest that I knew that Greg would love it. If you've never been there, it is a great place to check out. Here are some highlights. You may have to click on the images to really do them justice. (Please note: Greg's hat says, "#1 Grandpa" ha ha ha! He hated that all these pictures have him in that hat. Hey, it was hot and I was just protecting him.)

Devil's Postpile:
This is some crazy rock formation made from cooling lava. They are these hexagonal shaped pillars. Greg went crazy and started spouting off such things as "heat loss" and "cooling rates". He even started talking about "vesicles" in the rocks. I told him he was being inappropriate what with children around and all. Thankfully Marnie's dad was a geologist so she was able to give Professor Greg better ears than some of us (that means me--he gets this like voice...). She even showed off some of her rock knowledge which was fun to see. Anyway, it was great. Chloe even turned into a mini professor in her own right lecturing her cousin, Penny, about volcanoes and how they only erupt lava when they are awake instead of sleeping. She also explained lava as the volcano's blood. It was pretty classic. I'm pretty sure Penny kept talking about sleeping mountains for the rest of the camp-out and being careful not to wake them up. :-) We took a little detour afterward to go to a spot on the river where there are natural soda springs. It was fun to give the kids a break from the heat to play in the water. Check out the bubbling water. Cool.


Rainbow Falls:
This is such a beautiful waterfall. It is so cool to feel the mist. I remember being so excited to be able to hike to the bottom and be right there. The mist feels so good too because it is a pretty dry and hot hike so it feels great to cool off. It was a little sad of a hike because there was a bunch of fire damage but that lent itself to a great nature lesson to Chloe from Greg about how forest fires have a happy ending for plants. Maybe you had to be there. We were really proud of Chloe because she was able to hike the whole thing by herself. She had a great time. The end was a little rough though so it was awesome that Grandpa bought everybody popsicles at the General Store before going back to camp.

The River:
We had such a great campsite (we moved the second day from a stupid one) right next to the river and after taking a secret trail, we had our own, private beach that we only had to share with a deer taking a pee. I never knew they squatted to go to the bathroom. It was hilarious.

Stephan was the only one with a fishing license but Chloe and Penny both had fun trying to catch a fish on the Barbie fishing rod. Hey, it isn't my fault if I picked such an awesome fishing spot. All I was doing was seeing if I still knew how to cast and a fish straight up jumped onto my hook. I had to pull him in. The same thing happened when Marnie was trying to learn how to cast. Out of our control. Tati learned how to say "rock" on this camp-out. Talk about melting her Daddy's heart. She threw a butt-load of them in the water too. That's weird because Chloe said "butt-load" this week and we didn't know where she got it from. I guess it was me. Dang, I was sure it was her Daddy. Or maybe we both got it from him!

(P.S. Is it obvious yet that Greg did these photo arrangements? Come on, that picture of me? Please.)


Below is our baby fish. That water was like ice but she still wanted to go inside.

Mineret Falls:
We camped at Mineret Falls campground which is so pretty. The whole time we had a far away view of the waterfall. We decided that we really wanted to hike to it like the old days. So even though it was late in the day (after dinner) we wanted to get it in. Little did we know the journey we had in store. We talked to the campground host and he has laid out a plan of action for us to follow assuring us that if we crossed the river we could meet up with the official trail that would've been way longer and started at a totally different campground. It was a good thing it was Pioneer Day because oh brother were we trekking through the river and bush like the pioneers. There was even an unfortunate injury when I was trying to pass Marnie a walking stick to cross this marshland log and I whacked her in the eye. There was blood. It was horrible but not that bad of an injury in the end (phew). We just sort of forged our own trail which was fun and retarded. Then as the sun was setting, we stumbled upon Mosquito Village and we were all attacked like crazy. It was so sad because poor Tati and Ginger were just helplessly in their baby backpacks. Tati ended up with like 7 or 8 bites on her forehead. The only part that wasn't covered. We thought of turning back on more than one occasion. We had to take turns holding lifting and guiding the kids, going through nasty marsh land, deep and shallow bits of river and finally making it to the falls. They were pretty and I'm glad we went but I feel like it was more satisfying because it was such a victorious story of survival. That's what good vacations are made of anyway, those great stories that you'll remember for years to come.


The Earthquake Fault
I love this sign. I think if I were to make this sign I would've done it just like this. It makes me laugh every time. This seems a little more thrilling when I was younger like I was being so brave and was about to collapse into the earth. Plus Greg kind of killed it, let's be honest. He kept talking about how it wasn't even a fault but rather a "fissure" and was all bugged that actual scientists would have allowed the word "fault" on the sign and blah blah. Thankfully there was some fine print on the sign that saved the day when they said, "this isn't actually a fault but a fissure in the earth". They earned his respect back. Luckily it was thrilling for the kids.

The Campsite & Misc.

I don't have any pictures but I always enjoy the free showers that are heated by some hot springs that they've piped into these like bunker shower rooms. Maybe next time. We didn't take the girls because we knew it would burn them off, especially Tati (her skin is still too delicate). I love me a super hot shower but even I was yelping a little. There is something about getting so clean while you're camping that I just love. It is my kind of camping. We also took my parents' canoe out on one of the lakes. I was afraid we'd drop the camera in the water so we left it at camp. Stephan did some fishing from the boat but it just wasn't happening. The exciting parts were when we got Chloe to jump in the lake from the boat and "swim" around with her life jacket on. The other thrilling part was me steering the canoe while Stephan got more and more bugged at my wrong turns. What can I say, I was a little rusty.

We missed out on a few things that we did want to see and ran out of time, like the hot pots that smell like rotten eggs. We have fond memories of turning our rings and earrings colors and then the not so fond memories of seeing the hippies swimming there in their crocheted bathing suits. It was all a little overwhelming to our young eyes.

Overall, a great and memorable trip! Thanks Mom and Dad for driving and for spoiling us like crazy. I even took home a few (understatement) souvenirs (AKA Mosquito bites). I forgot how delicious I was. Somewhere there is a mosquito telling stories about me to the other mosquitos and they don't believe him.