Gorgeous Snow Weekend

After all that rain in December, we've been waiting for another good snowfall in the mountains so we could try out our new snowshoes, but it just isn't happening. So, we went ahead with our weekend trip, but the snowshoes have to wait for another storm. Instead, we spent Saturday at Dodge Ridge. Daddy-o and the older two kids hit the slopes while I tried to get Peanut used to his skis since it was his first time. We hadn't planned early enough to get him into a lesson, but figured I could work with him for awhile and then Daddy-o could take him up the bunny slopes. Well, it didn't play out quite like we'd hoped, and after getting tangled up on the rope tow near the base of the hill, he quit and that was pretty much it for the rest of the day. He hung out with me by one of the fire pits, reading Harry Potter, and then went to play on a little hill. He said maybe next year, haha. I think we'll try a lesson next time.

We stayed overnight in a cabin, and after doing virtual church (seriously, one of the best parts of the pandemic is how everything is available pretty much wherever we are now), we went to Pinecrest Lake to see if we could find a place to snowshoe.

It ended up being walkable, so we just hiked in the snow, but still fun.

The lake looked beautiful. 

And in the mud around the lake, we found these awesome ice crystals.

Whole chunks of them would pull out of the loose dirt along the shore.

The campground made for a fun place to walk and play.

We've been so lucky the last couple years with our snow days being quite warm. No need to bundle up too much!

And we found a snowman at the end of our hike. At least we got a taste of winter, even if it wasn't quite what we'd planned.

Time to Go Home

Our trip was finally coming to a close and it was time to make the drive home, but we weren't quite done exploring. We had a couple planned stops, and then, we also saw this one--Mono Lake--and made a quick detour. I noticed that there was a pullout that was right off the highway where we could quickly get to the actual lake, and since we've been to so many bodies of water on this trip, I pulled over.

Well, Mono Lake isn't quite like any of the other water we saw on this trip. The stench hit us before we made it to the water's edge, and if that hadn't been enough to detour us, the swarms of flies all along the edge would have. It was a VERY quick stop--basically ran down to the water, looked at the cool rock and salt formations, and then ran back to the car. But we saw it!

Next stop was Bodie State Park--site of an old mining town turned ghost town. This one was really cool.

Lots of old equipment around.

A lot of the buildings have been maintained enough to keep them from falling apart.

Lots of pictures taken on this stop. 😁

The last residents left around 70+ years ago and things are mostly left as they were at that time--they call it "arrested decay".

But the town had dwindled from almost 10,000 people at it's peak in 1881 to only a couple hundred people by the 1900s.

Short doorways!

Only about 10% of the town survived the last fire (1932), but most of those buildings are available for tourists to peak in the windows and imagine life at that point.

After wandering around for a couple hours, it was time for a lunch stop in Bridgeport and then one last stop.

There was still a lot of water along the drive home, so we pulled over to play in the river for a bit.

It was icy cold, but that didn't stop some people from getting all the way under.

Some of us just enjoyed the view while soaking our feet.

Even Peanut did a lot of scrambling over rocks. It's hard for me to remember sometimes that he is growing up and not the little kid I have to constantly protect, but I let him play and he had a blast.

So maybe we didn't do as much hiking on this stretch of the trip as originally planned, but there was still a lot of adventuring. It was a beautiful way to end an epic road trip. 

Devil's Postpile National Monument

There were only two of us who were willing to get up early enough to get into the park for Devil's Postpile before they require you to take a (pricey) shuttle.

Got to hike with this kid today.

And see some really awesome geology.

 

And it was totally worth the early wake up. (Let's be real--I haven't been sleeping well at this location because of the lack of A/C in our condo, and having to share a pullout sofa with Peanut, so it wasn't really a big deal to get up instead of tossing and turning for a couple more hours.)

We also tacked on a couple more miles to go see Rainbow Falls. Bug has been doing little sketches in each of the national parks we've been to. Pretty cool souvenir.

We weren't there at the right time of day to see the rainbow, but it was still beautiful. And then we got to half-run back to our car because it was getting late and everyone else was awake and ready to head out on the day's adventure. Bug did a lot more running, I just hurried. :)

One last look. Nature is amazing.

Mammoth Lakes Adventure

Next adventure was new country for us. Neither Daddy-o or I had ever been to Mammoth Lakes and when some friends of ours asked if we'd want to go for a few days of hiking with them, we realized we could make a loop out of our UT trip and meet up with them for the hikes.

The hike details kept changing--first we were looking at 13.5 miles, 9 miles, and 5 miles. I was a little worried that at least some of us might just die with that many miles in 3 days. Luckily, things shifted and we dropped the longest one, but the first day, we set out on the 9 mile hike to Duck Lake. We knew there was a chance that Peanut wouldn't make it and one of us might have to turn back with him, but there were lots of lakes along the way, so still a great hike no matter how far you actually go.

We had a lot of elevation gain, lots of rocky trail, 

and by the time we made it to Barney Lake for a lunch stop, Peanut was DONE. He had a cold and wasn't feeling great anyway, so the fact that he made it this far was kind of amazing.

These lakes were so pretty --clear, cold water. While half the group kept going, the moms turned back with the three youngest kids and made a stop at Skelton Lake to put our feet in for a bit. This did rejuvenate Peanut a little which helped us on the couple miles back to the car.

A not-so-happy hiker.

In the meantime. . . Bean, Bug, Daddy-o, and two of our friends made it up to Duck Lake, where they jumped in. . . and jumped right back out. Water from snow runoff is COLD! The hike had some serious uphill, but they all loved it and said it was one of the prettiest lakes they've ever seen.

We found lots of wildflowers along the way of various types.

Such beautiful country.

And back at the condos, there was still a lot of fun to be had. Games, hot tubbing, swimming, and more hot tubbing. The kids have just been loving all the friend and family time on this trip after a year of so little in person fun with others. (And this family felt like a really safe one to hang out with because they are not only vaccinated, but also had Covid in the spring, so we're probably the more dangerous component of all this hanging out.)