At 7:30 in the morning I woke to a knock on my door. My friend had made it to town. We went and got breakfast where I ordered two entrees. Then we went back to the room to nap and relax. Like always, this stay in town centered around food. We went and got lunch, followed by a trip to Black Doubt Brewing and some milkshakes.
For dinner, I wanted to head to Mammoth Tavern where Meghan and I had a great fondue dinner last time we were here. This time though, I wasn’t going to share the fondue.
The waiter told me it was a lot of food, but when I told him I was a thru hiker, he stopped worrying if I would finish it. I did finish it, by the way.
The next morning we slept in and got another town breakfast before getting our groceries and hitting the trail. There were lots of people in town and getting a hitch out was easy.
We had to face the same terrible Mammoth Pass trail but this time it went much faster. We made it back to the trail around 1:30 and then headed out. Today we passed the Devil’s Postpile National Monument, which has a really cool waterfall and a bunch of cool basalt columns. The waterfall and postpile aren’t right on trail, but it was easy to take a detour and see them.
You can see why it’s called rainbow falls. The postpile looks a lot like some of the columns I’ve seen at Mt Rainier or rock climbing in Vantage. We got to walk over the top of them too. They really formed perfectly here.
Soon after the monument, the mosquitoes became terrible. I hiked as fast as I could and eventually ended up in a trailhead parking lot. I’m not really allowed to camp here, but about a dozen other people are staying here too.