Day 28. Friday, July 17, 2009. Mileage: 1054.4 – 1074.6 (20.2 miles)

Hiking, breaking, and camping with Gravy has been fun and we have temporarily melded into a threesome from our twosome. We are in Mokelumne Wilderness, which this morning has looked like the Bad Lands again, desert-like but with a stimulating intensity.

We took a series of pictures in karate poses or, as Danger insisted, “kicking butt” pictures.

The trail was smoothly graded and the small ups and downs averaged out to relative flatness reminiscent of the first half of the trip around Kennedy Meadows.

We made great time. We had lunch by a pleasant valley creek and had a short power nap. I got off trail for 5 minutes and found myself in some strange lot. I realized I was off the trail and began to backtrack, yelling “Dangermouse!” on the off chance that she might hear me. She did, and we started back on the trail together.

Gravy had heard a hearsay rumor of trail magic at Spur Trailhead but no luck. The 2.4 climb up The Nipple was beautiful and through partly open meadow, but it was a harder and longer hike than I expected at the day’s end. Having been out of drinking water for several miles made the end of the day difficult too, but Danger shared some of her water and I could then enjoy the views and the wildflowers more.

I wanted a lake swim more than I wanted a town day, and two beautiful lakes beckoned to me from about 1000 feet below The Nipple, on either side of the ridge. Walking a tightrope above them both and hoping to soon drop down into one, we began to jog downhill, laughing all the way.

We jogged to the more eastern of the lakes and jumped in within minutes of getting there.

Shortly thereafter, Gravy joined us and we ate dinner while playing trivia from our bank of memorized oatmeal package questions. The three of us camped at a beautiful lakeside that boasted another disappearance into seeming nothingness on one end. A bear came in the middle of the night and took off with someone’s dog food at our campsite at Lost Lakes, and I am hugely disappointed that I didn’t wake up to see that bear! UGHHH.