Day 50 | mile 906.7 - 914.9 | nearo in Mammoth

Woke up at 6. Forrest was fast asleep still. No continental breakfast at Motel 6. And I was hungry. Woke up Forrest because I knew he’d have breakfast researched and figured out. I love eating with Forrest.

Breakfast burrito and seared ahi tuna salad at Delicious Kitchen. The breakfast burrito especially was bomb.com. And fresh greens and tomatoes and cucumbers in the salad mmmm.

Next stop is USPS. I finally got the package that Philip mailed to Agua Dulce. That feels like so long ago! The box was in really bad shape from being bounced from town to town. I got a backpacker meal breakfast, a bunch of cooked bacon (so good to add to potatoes or ramen), lots of fruit snacks, and month old pine nut white chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were crumbly but still good! So fun to get a package.

Ranger station to get a wilderness permit for Forrest. Can I say how nice it is to have a friend with a car in town to drive you around?

Checked out of the Motel 6 and booked a room at Quality Inn. In it for the continental breakfast and automatically dispensed pancakes.

Met Alison at a coffee shop at 1. I was little nervous about whether Forrest and she would get along, but they hit it off and we chatted for almost 2 hours.

Got into the new room at Quality Inn. It is a palace complete with granite counter tops. Got some computer time looking through pictures and posting blogs.

We were waiting for 5 pm for the road to Red's Meadow to open. Our plan was to knock out the 8 miles from Red's Meadow to Agnew Meadow as a day hike. Then come back to Agnew Meadow tomorrow morning and hike to Tuolomne Meadows. (That's a lot of meadows!)

Pita Pit for a pre-hike early dinner. Did I already say I love eating with Forrest? All the food we get is implicitly shared. And I'd say we have pretty similar tastes. We got a breakfast pita and a gyro pita. Both were good, but the breakfast one was amazing.

Dropped the car off at the Agnew Meadows parking. Got out on the road to hitch to Red's Meadow. First car stopped for us! This guy, Chris, is a teacher at a school in Arizona on an Apache reservation. He was just driving from Mammoth to Devil's Postpile, but we convinced him to drive a bit further to Red's and just hike a mile to Devil's Postpile with us.

Devil's Postpile was cool, but had a ton of mosquitos. We took a picture and just had to move, move, move.

Came up to a creek that was almost up to your knee. There was a log across, but it was kind of skinny. I went first. Made it across, but it was really bouncy in the middle. Forrest went next. He tried just walking, then "slithering across" (his words, not mine) on all fours. He promptly fell in and glasses went swimming. I was videotaping the whole thing until his glasses fell in. Oh shit oh shit. Forrest was just sitting on the log paralyzed. I ran over (still on the log) to look for his glasses. Surely they'd sink, right? I leaned over and stuck my arms in the freezing water. And, in slow-motion, my phone went plop into the water. I ripped my wind pants on the log and went swimming after it, but the phone was out within half a second.

No sign of the glasses. I even went down the stream looking for them. :-/ We were losing light pretty quick, so we cut our losses and moved on with wet shoes, wet phone, and no glasses.



Forrest was pretty stunned. I tried to keep him talking and occupied so that the miles would go by faster. We didn't bring headlamps and it looked like we were going to be back at the car at 9. It was rough on Forrest, but I knew we'd be fine. Got to the car and I drove us back to the hotel discussing whether Forrest would go backpacking tomorrow.

Forrest took a shower. Alison came over to use our hotel bathroom to take a shower. Long story. We all had tea and cookies. And decided to Forrest would make the call tomorrow morning.