August 10-Ray shares his campsite

Miles Hiked: 10.2  Total: 64.79
Elevation Gain: 1509 ft

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." ~John Muir

OUR NATIONAL PARKS - pub. 1901

[John]

Had a good night’s rest, albeit including a couple strange dreams I had in the morning – one where Laura, my youngest daughter (now 30) was around 5 years old and I got all righteous about this pretentious British tea service we were experiencing and the other about a really nice, comfortable warm wind blowing from which I awoke realizing I was near suffocating in my sleeping bag!

Rosalie Lake

Met up with the Boston foursome again as we ascended toward Trinity Lakes that morning.  Learned that David and Zoe planned to be on Mt. Whitney by the 21st, within 14 days of departing TM (very doable as we eventually discovered) while Wayne and Isaiah planned to exit at Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR) near Lake Edison about 40 miles ahead.

Our pace was a bit slower than the day before and we enjoyed a nice lunch and “bath” on a rapidly flowing stream after the Emily Lakes trail. Since we had to pick up our second food drop at the Reds Meadow store and we didn’t want to begin another ascent until the following morning, we decided to seek out a camp site at the RM campground and visit the RM café for dinner. We went through Devils Postpile enroute and felt like aliens amongst all the freshly clothed, cleaned, perfumed and, too often, fat tourists. We had already lost at least 10 lbs. each and were feeling pretty smug about that, despite the fact we were filthy and wreaked!

We befriended a First Nation man named Ray at the campground, who invited us stay at his extra campsite which he had reserved so that he could accommodate his nephews and their sons. He was very generous and had been coming to RM for 20+ years in honor of his brother, whose ashes are spread in the wilderness nearby.

Devil's Postpile National Monument

We “cleaned up” again, using the cold water in the restroom sinks, and went to dinner at the café before picking up our food drop. We ran into Zoe and David who shared perhaps a liter of lemonade with us before dinner. Man, was that cold lemonade good! Once again, we feasted on burgers, topping them off with cherry pie a la mode (me) and ice cream (Christi).  Found out that RM does not have a hiker box, so we took our food back to the camp site and gave about half of it to Ray’s nephews and their kids.

Those burgers were good but, when we said thanks and good bye to Ray the next morning, he told us they were going to give us some fresh trout the night before but we were already in bed!