Hippies and. . .Day 2

Disclaimer:
The contents below are part of a multipart series of events that took place during Thanksgiving week 2008. Please be sure to read from the bottom up, otherwise you will read the story in reverse. The events are told as i remember them. Names, ages, and locations have not been altered to protect the innocent. . .or guilty.

Day 2.

What's the first thing you see when you sleep in the back of a truck. . .you're looking at it.

Morning routine in Tahoe.

Our abode for the week. Get used to it. . .we did.

We woke up to a nip in the air but a calm Lake Tahoe. I strolled down the deck of the yard we were staying in and snapped off a few photos and enjoyed the peaceful view. It was time for some nourishment and more southbound driving. One of the best things you learn by “dirtbagging” is how resourceful you become, taking baths in restaurant bathrooms and the like. The drive to Mammoth is only a few hours from Tahoe. The trip up and over the Sierras afforded us with some beautiful views, ones a camera will never do justice, so. . .you get no pics. If you want to see it you’ll just have to come out here and do it yourself. On the way down to Mammoth all signs pointed to Plan B. Plan B consisted of a trip into Yosemite if the snow wasn’t good or plenty enough for shredding. The problem with Plan B was that all roads, minus one that was way out of the way, were closed for the winter. Being bold explorers, non-law abiding citizens, and lastly. . .Everlines, we took a side trip to check out the access to said closed roads. The idea was we could contort the Yota around any gate or roadblock the U.S. Forest Service could put in our way. We were wrong! Apparently the Forest Service has been blocking roads longer than we have been driving. . .probably even longer. The closed road was well fortified with a steel gate, large boulders and steep hillsides; all formidable foes for the Yota by themselves, let along combined. We opted to avoid any tumbles down a hill or serious injury and headed back on our route to Mammoth.

This is what you do when the Forest Service blocks all your possible routes into a park.

Some random lake on our path through the Sierras.

A little tribute to the mother land.

The rest of the trip southward was uneventful. We pulled into Mammoth Lakes mid afternoon and immediately began scoping out our surroundings. We drove up to the lodge to find several people packing up their ski/board equipment for the day. A good sign since Plan B was ousted earlier in the day. Next on our list was to find a good place to park the truck for the night. We learned our lesson in Tahoe, finding safe side roads is easier in the light. After some cruising around we discovered a nice little break in the snow that led down to a flat, snow covered meadow out of sight from the main road. We pulled down into the meadow to check for level ground, decided it was fit for sleeping and headed to town for some food and more exploration. Downtown Mammoth Lakes is a pretty cool little village, outfitted with a gondola that takes village visitors up to the slopes. Todd and I strolled though the village for a while, enjoying the steel sculptures and poking our heads in windows of stores. After being the truck for two straight days it was nice to air out a little bit.

Bussling downtown Mammoth Lakes.

Big fish.

Steel (or some other metal) bear sculpture.

The east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range is known for it’s abundance of hot springs. Without a tub or shower attached to our chateau (it’s in the works), we needed to find someplace, other than restaurant bathrooms, to purty ourselves up, especially if we planned on hanging with the SoCal crowd in Mammoth. We swept into the local mountaineer shop to see what kind of info we could pull from their guide book section. Todd picked up a hot springs guide for the area. The plan was to memorize the contents of the book and find the springs by memory. Yes, this was a budget trip if you couldn’t already tell by our sleeping accommodations. However, after a few pints memorization isn’t very easy so Todd coughed up the $16 + tax (Damn tax! I love Oregon!) for the book. The sun had set and like side roads for sleeping, hot springs are pretty hard to find in the dark too. We diligently followed the book’s directions, minus driving about 20 miles down highway 395 instead of the 9 miles the book prescribed (road trip coma). Both navigator and driver had a hard time finding the “Green Church” the book denoted as a landmark. Apparently, green churches are hard to see in the darkness of the central Californian desert. We did manage to navigate ourselves to one hot spring, which was closed due to unstable geothermal activity. The book stated that this particular hot spring would erratically fluctuate in temperature. The sign at the entrance of the park (the same sign that said DO NOT ENTER AFTER DARK) stated that 14 people had been killed or severely burned since 1970 something. I thought the number was pretty low, Todd thought otherwise. Nevertheless, we walked down to the spring, just to scope things out. It was pretty well barricaded, not well enough to keep us out if we really wanted to burn the flesh off our bones but the unstable geothermal threat was enough to keep us behind any fences. Rejected and dirty, it was time for some food and booze.

A waring worth keeping to.

It was back to Mammoth Lakes for some pitas and a night at the local tiki bar. The pitas were tasty and much appreciated. The tiki bar was blown off in our initial fly by but after checking out other options we returned for a night never to be expected at a tiki bar, in Mammoth California. Upon our return there was a band just getting set up for a night of jamming; what we hoped was some mellow tiki-like jamming. It seemed a little odd that the band was all wearing black leather and the lead singer had a 12 inch long cuff of 6 inch long steel spikes. Certainly not a Jack Johnson cover band. In fact, they couldn’t have been more far off from such. When they started moving all the furniture outside and the fog machine was drug out of the van, we knew we were in for a show. The band was loud, the lyrics were unintelligible, and the mosh pit (yes, a mosh pit at a tiki bar in Brody country) was violent. Todd witnessed a guy spitting blood into the bathroom sink and we both saw a drunk girl get run over by a giant human being who was stiff-arming mosh participants to the ground. The highlight of the evening, minus the ear-ringing that continued for the next two days (does that make me old?) was the condom machine in the bathroom. Just above the coin slot it stated “For Refund, Insert Baby Here.” If you haven’t chuckeled yet. . .think about it.

Think about it. . .

Nothing like a mosh pit at a tiki bar. The classiest of classy.

A tiki bar after several beverages.

Once we downed enough beverages to temporarily stop the bleeding of our ears, or at least not notice, it was time to hit the snow covered meadow and sleep. We found the meadow without incident and it was off to slumber-land for the two of us.

Nighty night.