20 Years Together - 20 Miles Backpacking around Bridgeport

20 years ago in September of 1991 there was a boy and a girl in 10th grade who had PE class together.  The boy really liked the girl, but the girl really liked the boy's friend instead.  Eventually, on May 29, 1992 the girl came to her senses, gave up on the friend and picked the boy instead....

7 years later, on May 29, 1999 the boy and girl got married.  AWWW,  how sweet.....




So we are celebrating 20 years together (13 married) and what better way to celebrate than spending 4 days hiking 20 miles together, right?  The eastern Sierra Mountains outside of Bridgeport have become our favorite place as of late, so we head to that area again.  There are two lakes we want to hike to.  Tamarack Lake is the first one.

We start in on a 4 mile hike up this dirt road that is nearly vertical.  There is nothing like getting back into backpacking and having your first hike go straight up a mountain.   After 2 miles we find the real trail and follow it all the way to Tamarack.







It is nice and cold which we enjoy immensely.  Cold mountain air is one of the best things about being in the Sierras at this time of year.  We hadnt planned on it snowing though....

We got the tent up as quickly as we could and then climbed inside!!  There isnt a lot of hanging out at camp when it is snowing outside, so we read for a little while ( coincidentally I was reading "Snow Child")  and then took a 2 hour nap.  Normally this would be great, but it was like 3:00, a little late for such a massive nap. 

After we woke up, the snow stopped and we decided our 4 hour hike in wasnt long enough so we hiked up to a little lake about a mile away.  After a delicious dinner of Mac and Cheese (remember, backpacking all food is gourmet.  It is amazing how delicious things taste when it is all the food you have!)  Then off to bed, easier said than done.  Shane fell asleep no problem, but my little nap had really messed me up.  I stayed up reading until 1:30am!!  Yikes!!

In the morning, we decided we hadnt brought enough food to stay another night, so we hiked out the 4 miles and got to our car with hungry bellies.  We had planned well, so our car was stocked with a cooler full of food and beer.  Massive amounts of exercise mixed with very little intake of food makes for the best tasting food ever!! 

We wanted to hike on the other side of the mountain range where we had just been so we drove around to the trailhead that goes to East Lake and West Lake.  We had just hiked out 4 miles and were setting up to hike in and UP another 4 miles, this was my desire to hike 8 miles in one day......

 I refused to budge as long as possible, then i got up stopped my whining and started hiking!

This is what we look like after hiking 8 miles in one day....

But as you know, we are crazy, so after setting up the tent we really felt we hadnt had enough exercise so we decide to hike up a snow covered mountain to a lake called Par Value, the weirdest lake name we have ever heard.  We actually looked it up online when we got home, but no good explanation could be found for such a weird name.

Us in front of the lake called PAR VALUE

And our favorite part of hiking up snow covered mountains..... Sliding down.  It took us an hour to get to the top of this mountain, and it took 5 minutes to slide down.

This is about 100 feet up.

The next morning we hiked out and headed over to Virginia Lakes.  We were just going to camp on the side of the road somewhere because we wanted to kayak on Mono Lake the next morning before we headed home.  

After setting up camp we drove to Virginia Lakes to do a quick little evening hike.  It was pretty close to dusk so we didnt head in to far.  While we sat and talked at the edge of a little lake on the trail, Shane and i notice an older man with long hair hiking past on the trail.  It was nearly dark and Shane swears he was floating by, gave him the nickname "Spirit Man"  Shane decides then and there he is going to grow out his hair and strive to be like this spirit man.....After our close encounter with Spirit Man, we head back to our camp.

In the morning we drive to Mono Lake and survive one of the longest portages of our life with our kayak.  It must have been a quarter mile to the lake.  It was brutal, not to mention we had just hiked 20 miles and not eaten much in the last 3 days. After lots of stop and goes...we make it onto the lake.

Osprey

We figure out on our portage out that it is actually easier to carry the kayak on our shoulders than to bang it against our legs for 1/4 mile.  Exhausted and in desperate need of some real food we head to Hay Street Cafe in Bridgeport......

And with that, we headed home.  Shane and I had worked on a Word Cloud to celebrate our 20 years together.  When we finished, I had it made into a canvas print.  I hope that the past 20 years are an indication of the next 20 years.  I have never been happier and they really do just keep getting better and better.