Mary Panttaja

End of trip wrap-up notes:

• Saturday in Mammoth Lakes was still cold. The promised warm-up didn’t happen until Sunday as we were leaving. We rode the gondola up to the top of the ski mountain—13 Degrees and 20-30 mile an hour winds. A very beautiful place, Mammoth, though I’m not sure I’d want to be here when the ski crowds are here. (They are still skiing here now; Jim says their target closed date is usually July 4.)
• We waited all day for the temperatures to climb, and finally did our bike ride at 46 degrees. One time when the only thing you want to do is ride uphill (to keep warm.)
• Sunday, we drove to Coloma (essentially a state park) in the foothills (the place where Sutter first found gold in the Sierras) assuming that we surely could get some warmer weather there. And we were right. Didn’t quite know why Jim picked Coloma, but when I chatted up a man at the local market (whose only fresh vegetables were onions and potatoes) about his really cool play boat (kayaks designed for free-style white water kayaking; tiny—like 4.5-5 feet long) we found out that there was a great kayak store here. I never know how Jim knows these things. (Yeah, right.) But we biked over to Lotus and tried on some boats. (Just checking to see how many parenthetical ideas are percolating in here.)
• We are at the Coloma Resort which is a campground with cabins and a mile of frontage on the American River. The also run the Coloma Outdoor Discovery School, which does rafting, ropes courses, kayaking, and swimming camps for kids. It seems like really great location with the river and the State Park right here. (They could lose the braying goat though.)
• The temperature range for the trip: 13 to 106. Only precip was snow. And sand, if you count the sandstorm—still finding piles of sand inside the equipment. �

So now we’re on the way home. We’ve a lot of notes for improving the camper set up; top on the list is to figure out how to run the computers offline.

(I’ll post a note later if I manage to insert pictures into these travel logs.)