Taking Chances in Mammoth Lake and Yosemite
We almost couldn’t get into Yosemite National Park because the gate closest to Mammoth Lakes, where we stayed that night, was closed for the last 2 days due to fires in the area. We took a chance and drove to the gate anyway and luckily for us they had just reopened the gate and they were escorting cars with a pilot car into the park! 🙂 Yay! So we got to see the park and we didn’t have to drive 5 extra hours.
Yosemite is stunning! There are many lakes, green trees, picnic tables and scenic look out points. We didn’t see a bear but apparently they come after people’s food if you leave it in the open and at night they even break into cars looking for food. So at camping areas there are bear-proof bins and containers to put your food in. Americans make the camping look like so much fun! Some people really go all out with their camping gear and many people have an American flag on their camping site.
The place we stayed at in Mammoth Lakes had a pool and a hot tub which was quite fun. There we met a local, Crazy Dave. We don’t actually know his real name but he started telling us his life story about his divorce, mental illness, medication, and that he studied artificial intelligence at varsity. But if it wasn’t for Crazy Dave we probably wouldn’t have seen the most beautiful lakes in Mammoth. In between his personal stories, he told us about the 4 best view points to see the lakes in the area. He bragged about how he is really talented at drawing maps because he studied engineering and that he will draw us maps on how to get to the cool lakes. It was actually really sweet because he went to his room and came back a while later with 4 pieces of cardboard paper in a Ziploc bag. He had drawn us 4 maps with directions on how to get to the best lakes. His maps were illegible but he wrote the name of every lake at the top of each map. So early, before sunrise the next morning, we typed in the lake names in Google maps and took a chance on Crazy Dave’s lake suggestions. The lakes he had suggested were super stunning. 🙂 
