Days 1-3

Well, I am back! Vacation was...wonderful. Just not having to go to work was great! Then to get to do a bunch of fun things on top of that...priceless! Hmmm. So, how should I break this up? I guess I'll go day by day. That would probably be the best. I'll put the pictures that go with the day underneath it. (Today I'll just do the first couple of days and post the pictures that go with it tonight...Jason has them)

Day 1: We got up quite early. We got on the road at about 6am. The plan was to be on the road at 5am but loading the bikes took a bit longer than we anticipated. Note to everyone out there. The Yakima tail hitch bike rack states that it holds four mountain bikes. It technically does! Unless you have a bunch of K-Mart bikes though...I don't recommend trying it with out a ton of zip ties and rags to tie around crucial parts that rub against the bike next to it. The damage could have been worse but some not so great things happened to our bikes because of how jammed on they were. No bueno in my book. A big no bueno is Jason's book. We were the typical paranoid bikers. :-) The drive though went by fast...really fast. Jason took the straight highway and I took the windy road up through Yosemite. We rolled into Big Meadow at about 3 or 4pm. We managed to snag the last campsite on the creek (very coveted) :-). We unpacked everything, set up camp, and got all settled in. It was a good travel day.

Day 2: We hit Mammoth Mountain right off. The original plan was to wait a couple of days to get acclimatized to the mountain atmosphere. Jason just couldn't wait though :-). So, off we went. Our first impression of the mountain...DRY! We went straight to the top. There were no trees or anything green for that matter and the trails were loosey loose. It was fun though. We took an intermediate trail first. It was fun but not all that challenging. Then we took an advanced trail and that was a bit more fun. I ate it of course and finished the day with a bloody knee. The trails were fun though. It definitely improved my downhill and made me more confident. Jason was a super stud. He did this super hard downhill part without stepping down. I was thoroughly impressed. I walked it of course. :-) (Also, only the top of the mountain was desolate...the middle and base had trees and stuff.) We finished the day with a trail called "Downtown". It was supposedly an "easy" trail. It was 6 miles of windy, fast, and smooth downhill. It started at the foot of Mammoth and dumped you off downtown. It was so FUN! We were one of the last one's on the trail and so we put it into the large chain ring and cranked as hard as we could. There were some sketch moments where I was pretty sure that I was totally out of control but it was completely and totally a blast!!! Jason was slightly giddy from it all! :-)

Day 3: We headed up to Mosquito Flats and did a day hike. We packed our lunches and our fishing poles and hiked up to all these different lakes and streams. It is so gorgeous out there...I just love it. You have these streams and lakes surrounded by green and wild flowers with a backdrop of mountains that still had snow on them. We fished along the way. I caught one fish! :-) My line was actually tangled and so the bait was just sitting in the water as I tired to untangle it. A fish bit onto it and then got away because I couldn't reel it in. Then another one bit on and Jason grabbed the line itself and pulled the little guy in. The one time I catch fish...the line is tangled. Go figure. The fish out there are wild and so it's pretty hard to catch them. They get startled by the slightest shadow. Jason caught the world's smallest fish! It was a tiny little thing.

Ok, to be cont. Pictures to come tonight!!!