Day 3 - August 13th
Above photos are the view from our campground! First thing I did this morning was saying "Happy Birthday" to Cyndi! She was born on the 13th and number 13th brought her a lot of luck! I offered to treat her lunch at Red's Meadow but since we still carried a lot of food and we did not want to waste our food, we settled for a drink of her choice and will celebrate after the trip! Our resupply at Muir trail Ranch was only three days away and now i was worrying that I won't be able to fit all my supply into the bearvault.
I made a hot coffee, freezed dried breakfast and find a tree log to sit on and to reflect. With the view like this, I felt like all these were just a dream! Why it took me this long to get here! I had to pinch myself to see if i was dreaming. From the uncertainty causing by Ferguson fire couple days ago that could detour our hiking trip to this spectacular view was hard to describe. All that worries, now i was in the middle of it, enjoy the infamous John Muir trail that hikers all over the world could only dream off.
This is only the third day but this seemed like a norm now. The morning sunlight and especially in the forest was beyond words. After a little bit of up hill, we enjoyed 7 miles down hill hiking through the forest before we headed toward Devils Postpile. The monument with an unusual rock formation of columnar basalt was on my list of things to see. It did not disappointed me! The direction around Devils Postpile National Monument is a little bit confusing. This confirmed what I read from previous hikers so we decided to take the shuttle to Reds Meadow store about 1.5 mile away.
Cyndi and I are morning coffee drinkers! Somehow she forgot her coffee so i have been sharing my Via Starbucks coffee with her. I wished that I brought more but i had just enough to last for myself until MTR resupply. The first thing we did at Reds Meadow is to look for "good" instant coffee and soda drink to celebrate her birthday. Reds Meadow has a medium size general store that hikers use for their resupply. They also have a Cafe place that hikers used to hang out for a hot meal. Luckily the general store did have Via Starbucks coffee so I offered to buy including cream soda for her birthday.
Today's weather was a little warm and we still had 5.5 miles to hike with 1500 ft elevation. Our goal was to reach mile 66.4 of JMT where we camped at Deer Creek. This was the last fresh water for the next 5 mile. Finally we had our chance to do laudry and took a bath. So far everything went well more than we expected. My legs felt good and scenery of JMT was unbelievable. The campground on the 3rd night was not that bad either considering that two hikers turned back and camped next to us since they realized there was no water for the next 5 miles with 1000 ft elevation gain.
