Our good friends, Doug and Tracee, have a beautiful second home here in Mammoth Lakes. From their back deck you can see two peaks. Depending on the topo map, both are either unnamed or the tall one is Pyramid Peak.  Most locals call it Pyramid.  Doug decided to name them Doug’s and Tracee’s Peaks. For three years we’ve been talking about climbing Doug’s. Talk is cheap and watermelon is sweet, so today was the day for us to butter that biscuit.

This wasn’t going to be an easy Duck Lake or Mammoth Crest hike. This was going to be a no trail, scramble straight up scree fields, and bouldering hike. It took Doug, Amelia, and myself over four hours to go five miles. If this were twenty years ago, we probably would’ve had ourselves in harm’s way. The dark clouds were quickly developing and we had only reached Tracee’s Peak. But now that we are older and wiser, we made the correct decision to abort the mission. We got down safe and sound, but it did hail and rain on us, and 20 minutes from the parking lot the thunder began. Doug’s will have to be for another day.

Enjoy the beautiful pictures. The Eastern Sierras are spectacular.

Amelia and Doug at the start. Cool mottled sunlight.

We took the Heart Lake Trail for about 20 minutes, then hit the scree field.

We were all pleasantly surprised at the amount of flowers. Here’s your Western Blue Flax.

Mule Ears. In an emergency you can use the leaves to wipe.

Pennyroyal

Ranger’s Buttons

Sulphur-flower Buckwheat

Your blogger, hiking in a Hawaiian shirt! This was the first of many scree fields we crossed.

Scree!

That’s Amelia, way down there.

And there’s Doug, with Lake Mary, Mammoth Mountain on the right, and Banner, Ritter, and the Minarets.

Heart Lake.

We went way beyond this peak.

Then down into yet another scree field.

Then we picked up this faint trail. Those two specks in the middle are Doug and Amelia.

Doug on Tracee. Come on now, let’s keep this rated PG!

Doug and Doug’s. One day we’ll get to the top of that bad boy. Btw, it’s not as close as it looks, that’s at least 90 more minutes of serious scrambling.

Spectacular!

Up close look of the White Bark Pine above 11,000 ft. Tracee’s is 11,287 ft.

Time to descend, the clouds were forming quickly.

For the second time, our old age kept us out of harm’s way. On the descent we started going viewer’s right of this peak, and quickly realized it was too step, so we turned around and went the same way we ascended, to the left. This is the peak we went way beyond. All weather reports were calling for no thunder until 4pm. This was about noon.

As you can see it was really getting dark. Lake Mary looks totally different.

Nice shot of the high alpine lupine. The pic also gives you a good perspective of how far above tree line we were. Look closely and you can see the raindrops on the rocks.

Mariposa Lily.

Back on Heart Lake Trail. And the thunder began.

The view from Doug and Tracee’s deck after the hike. The taller peak on the left is Doug’s. The smaller peak is Tracee.

Here’s the zoomed in view of Doug and Tracee.

The day we left a year ago on this grand adventure, June 30^th, we were right back where we started from, San Diego. But just to take care of a few things like warranty service on the Airstream, visit family, build a new bike for Amelia, celebrate some birthdays, and spend time with our valuable friends that we miss dearly. I moved to SD in 1974 and Amelia was born and raised in SD. San Diego is in our blood. I reckon it will always be home.

We have been truly blessed to spend the year in Mammoth Lakes and on the road. I can’t thank Xperience Marketing and Gold Coast Packing enough for allowing me to work remotely. The year has been a blur; I know it’s a cliché, but time really does fly.

When discussing this blog entry together, learning curve was the common theme. Then again, isn’t life just one big learning curve?

Here are a few of the things from the last year we’ve learned and found interesting:

Recycling…it was so trippy and disturbing to Amelia that everyone doesn’t recycle. At least all the National Parks recycle.

Walmart…never dreamed we would spend a night in the parking lot, yet alone on Easter Sunday.

Grocery shopping outside of SoCal…wow, what a shock. You just take for granted all the fresh veggies and fruit that are available in SoCal. The further away you get the worse it is, even Mammoth is awful. It’s a double whammy, quality goes down, price goes up. What was once just a weekly chore, going to Sprouts to shop, is now an exciting event when back in SD.

Regional brewers…we have sampled some great beers. It’s fascinating to go into a store and see a half dozen or more breweries you’ve never heard of on the shelf. The best one may have been Odell, out of Fort Collins, Colorado.

My God, the Europeans love visiting the USA. I would guess a higher percentage of Europeans have visited USA, than Americans have visited Europe. It’s just an uneducated guess. It may have something to do with all the vacation time they get.

Vacationing and living are two different things. And working from the road is not as easy as it sounds.

Boon docking is awesome.

You meet some interesting folk on the road. Everyone has a story and most folks are kind and helpful, maybe there is hope for mankind.

There’s one feller we met in Hurricane at the WillowWind RV Park who is no doubt still telling all his buddies the story about when he met us, Mr. & Mrs. Fancy Pants. He was a nice enough guy from Utah originally, but now living outside of Phoenix. English was his native tongue, but his dialect was unique. He spoke a real strange version of what we speak everyday. He also was carrying around a 90 pound bag of Portland Cement above his waist line. He told me he was 58, but could have easily passed for 70. He was traveling with the Mrs. and three dogs and was very excited about seeing his grandchildren who lived in Hurricane. He has been vacationing in trailers his whole life. Even if you didn’t want to know something about trailers, he would tell you.

So we were getting ready to pull out, and he was observing us like a hawk. We have always had problems taking the hose off the Airstream that is connected to the city water. Same thing this time, so we get the pair of pliers out, just like the last time. Our buddy asked if we needed help as we were struggling with the hose, and struggling with him watching us have problems. We told him for some reason it always happens, but we’d get it off. He asked if we turned the water off, I looked at him like, really?  Boy, this guy must think we are dumb. Then he asked us if we drained the lines to release the pressure. What? He said that was the problem. Sure as shit, that was the problem. The hose came right off, no pliers needed! He was looking at us, and no doubt thinking, Mr. & Mrs. Fancy Pants in their shiny new Airstream trailer.

So then for the next few days we were laughing at ourselves and telling stories of what our buddy was saying to all of his friends about us, Mr. & Mrs. Fancy Pants and their shiny new Airstream trailer.

Things like…they had matching fancy bikes with no gears. She was drinking Chai Tea every morning and he was hand grinding his coffee beans. At night, I saw them drinking red wine and eating cheese. Of course, they had an Orange County Airstream license plate frame. They had a fancy designer dog that they called a puggle. A gas grill isn’t good enough for them, instead they had to have a charcoal barbecue. You should have seen the hoity toity special lawn chairs from France. Mr. & Mrs. Fancy Pants have a solar panel. They have two TVs and never use either of them. He claimed he was a consultant and she didn’t work.  I saw him drinking a fancy IPA in a 22oz bottle. She rolled out a yoga mat every morning and did some strange stretches. They had wild flowers in a little vase on their dining table.  And on and on and on we went.

Mr. & Mrs. Fancy Pants

Happy Independence Day everyone and R.I.P. Tony Gwynn.