Grouse Ridge - Day 2a

We hiked down to Five Lakes Basin after spending the morning climbing Black Buttes. It only took a couple of hours to climb to the top and back to our camp. The pace of this trip is much less frenetic than any that I have been on for quite a awhile. I kind of like the change.

After we got back from climbing the peaks Eric took up fishing and I took up sock washing. We'll if you can call rinsing your socks in a mostly frozen lake 'washing'. Perhaps a better term would be sock dunking. Anyway, my socks are not as smelly as they were before. Then I laid them out on the warm rocks to dry while I took a nap in the shade. This must be what leisure feels like.

 Some time around lunch time we mozyed down the trail. We past the couple with the dogs that barked at us. It wasn't the first time. They barked at us last night, and they barked at us this morning when we were heading up to the peak. They even barked when I was trying to quietly go make a fertilizer donation. It so much quieter now that we are here and the dogs are somewhere else.

We found a really great campsite at the northern-most lake in the Five Lake Basin. The only downside is it is only the middle of the afternoon and there really isn't any shade in the site. So I am hunkered down under some tree about fifty feet away. The giant ants of the Sierra also like the shade so every few minutes I have to stop blogging and flick them off of me. The hardest ones to flick are the ones that crawl up my back under my shirt.