Day 65: Family Day!
Date: Thurs 6/21
PCT Start Mile: NA
PCT End Mile: NA
PCT Mileage for Day: 0
Total PCT Mileage: 906.7
The Highlights: a visit from family
As much as we want to “sleep in” when we are in town, my body is on the “wake up early” schedule. That said, I was able to squeeze out some Zzzz’s until almost 7am, which is still sleeping in for us.
Before we went down to the hotel breakfast, we stopped by the fitness center for a quick workout. Kidding. We stopped by the fitness center because it had a scale. Whenever we have access to a scale, it’s interesting to see what we weigh in at.
Shawn went first, stepping on the scale and inching the little bar across the rungs until the scale balanced. 145! He’d lost about 23 pounds since starting the journey. Admittedly, he’d beefed up a bit before the hike, but he’s still looking very trim. Soon, a cheeseburger intervention will be in progress.
Shawn’s weigh in. Please send fatty foods.
Next it was my turn. I was also somewhere near my heaviest when we started the trail, and have lost about 13-14 pounds. Back to my fighting weight. As we continue to lose more weight we’ll have to start getting creative with packing in more calories, especially Shawn, as men tend to lose more on the trail. Women fare a little better in the weight department usually, as our bodies tend to better cling to stubborn fat. A good thing on the trail.
Weigh-ins over, we went to gorge ourselves at the awesome buffet breakfast at the hotel. Served in an actual restaurant, the complimentary breakfast with our stay was legit – great cold and hot options and eggs and pancakes to order. Sweet. I had some of everything.
After breakfast, it was back to the room to relax a bit before…. family time!!! Before leaving for our PCT adventure, my brother and his family had planned a two week trip out to California to visit Yosemite, King’s Canyon, other parks, and the South Lake Tahoe area. Looking at our estimated timeline before we left, it looked like we might be able to link up. Though we weren’t as far as South Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes was only about a 2-3 hour drive and they were happy to make the day trip to come and visit us. Awesome!!!
So, around 10:30am, their mini-van arrived, and we piled in with Justin, Shelly, and our four nieces for a day of family time.
With our nieces in Mammoth Village.
We started by heading down to the village area to walk around a bit and get an early lunch since they had eaten breakfast pretty early. We are always ready to eat, so this was fine with us.
We had pizza and talked about the trail and their vacation through central CA. At the beginning of their trip, they had visited King’s Canyon National Park at a time when we were also hiking through King’s Canyon, though we were on the other side of the park. While we were probably only 20 miles from each other as the crow flies, we were separated by the mighty Sierras. To actually connect in town, by roads, would have been closer to a six hour drive.
After pizza, we headed back up to the the Adventure Center to catch the same shuttle that had delivered us from Red’s Meadow yesterday, this time to head to Devil’s Postpile National Monument. The girls mostly like hiking (some more than others), and picked up junior ranger program activity books to complete during the short hike.
Working on the junior ranger book.
Devil’s Postpile is a stunning cliff of columnar basalt, formed by lava less than 100,000 years ago. The view of the basalt columns towering above you is really quite impressive.
Full family pic, though very far away.
After hiking to the bottom of the cliffside, we made our way around the loop trail to the top, where you could stand along the top of the columns in several areas, some smoothed out by the movement of glacial ice over the rocks.
Back at the ranger center, the girls turned in their completed activity books and took the oath to be sworn in as junior rangers. All in a day’s work.
After the shuttle ride back to the Adventure Center, we headed back into Mammoth Lakes for some much needed froyo. What is a vacation without a little ice cream? Or in this case – frozen yogurt – with all kinds of candy, cereal pieces, and marshmallows poured all over it?
Shawn and I are already excited to return tomorrow, our bowls maybe a little less exciting in the topping department than our nieces’, but delicious nonetheless.
With that, they dropped us back at our hotel to make the journey back to South Lake Tahoe, likely with four tuckered out girls sleeping in the back. I was also exhausted. I told Justin and Shelly that I thought the day with them was probably more exhausting than hiking all day on the trail. Props to all the parents out there! And thanks so much to our family for taking vacation time to come and visit us!!! It was an awesome day and so great to see everyone!
After resting back in the room for about an hour, we went back out for a bit. Shawn wanted to try out one of the local breweries – Black Doubt – a nano-brewery that makes only very small batches of their beers.
He highly approved, and after a flight and a pint, we went next door to grab some spicy tuna rice bowls for dinner before heading back to the hotel, where it didn’t take me long to conk out, exhausted by children, sunshine, froyo, and good food – all the best things.
