The road into Twenty Lakes Basin is not bad in the Subaru, but in the van…well let’s just say momma isn’t going to do that again, and she wasn’t even driving. Luckily she forgot all about it once we started hiking.
We always take the long way along Saddlebag Lake because of my foot the short way really makes me hobble (that’s how long my foot’s been bad!). We kind of blow through the lake area because we know how amazing it is once you get past it and into the basin. And as we always do, once we get into the meadows Lolo and I start to chase every little thing that makes a peep (and there are hundreds).
It wasn’t a hot day, it probably wasn’t even above 63 degrees but Lolo and I were very hot! Luckily the 20 lakes part of the name is very accurate (and actually, there surely has to be more, seriously lakes everywhere!). I swam at least a dozen times that day, probably more than I ever had on any other day. Momma thinks I must have had an inkling that it was going to be the end of the line for me for a while with my foot issue.
Pretty early on we lost our dad because he wandered off. The three of us quickly realized that he wasn’t with us and went back to where we’d last seen him, but it took him a good 20 minutes to realize we weren’t with him! Then he turned around and came back to find us patiently waiting for him.
Then momma said we should go hike up along the waterfall and we found a trail to do just that. We lost the trail after a while and wandered on up and up and up…and found a magical place which is where waterfalls are born!
There was an older man in his seventies up there who wanted to chat with our dad, so the three of us went around until we got to the scree that was steep enough we didn’t want to keep going. Plus momma was hungry and dad had the snack bag with him.
We decided to turn around after dad was done chatting and go out of the wind (which was whipping up here) to have lunch. On our way down we found the trail we had lost on our way up. Which totally always happens to us!
We finally ate, and started picking our way back to Saddlebag Lake. We didn’t want our vacation to be over! That night we slept up in Tuolumne Meadows, which momma loves if you get A loop and are close to Lembert Dome and the creek. We were in B loop but walked over to get our views anyways.
It was very cold up in Tuolumne, which was actually lower elevation than anywhere we had camped in Mammoth! In the morning it was in the 30s and we had to get an early start because dad had to go to work that afternoon. Momma drove so dad could enjoy all the views off Tioga road as we made our way back into the Central Valley.
It was such a fun trip – even with my bum foot we got to do a ton of exploring because the whole AREA was new to us! It also gave momma some more SUP goals…including some real crazy ones up in 20 Lakes Basin! But first, I gotta get this toe healed up so we can be trail ready.
Olaf 