Woke up on the shore of Thousand Islands Lake. There was a nice view of the mountains and the lake provided a reflection of them. Sat by the lake, read a little, and then had some tea and breakfast. While having breakfast an obnoxious couple gave us a lecture on Leave No Trace and how we should be camping more than 100ft from water and on a durable surface. Not really the way one wants to start a day. Eventually we got everything packed up and got started on our way.
We headed down the John Muir Trail and saw some more smaller lakes along the trail. The scenery was not nearly as impressive as the day before. Still got some ok photos. We came to the lake we were going to have lunch earlier than expected. Decided that we would take a side trail to the North Creek Trail to Agnew Meadows. This cut out some of the hills we would have had to hike up. The hike down to the river had no switchbacks (much to Richie’s delight).
The hike along the river wasn’t very eventful. The trail was not well maintained and occasionally it would seem like we lost it. Rich kept complaining about wanting lunch. Eventually we came to the junction that we would have joined up with had we continued on the JMT. The junction was blocked off by some logs. While hiking we had essentially decided to hike out the whole way as this day was only going to be 6 miles. Rich wasn’t happy about spending an extra day at a hotel.
Further down the trail we came to the actual North Creek trail junction. We determined that we were supposed to cross the stream. It didn’t really impact our travels too much. Hiked on for a while and met a couple by a bee hive along the trail. The man thought that he had been bit (not stung) by one. Hiked on more lost Rich and Mike. Stopped at a trail junction to wait for them and talked with some guys there about our trek. Found that we were pretty close to the parking lot.
We got to the parking lot and rested for a bit, then we started out on the road. Our plan was to hike down the road and hopefully hitch a ride. A couple hundred feet down the road we were picked up by the couple we met on the trail by the bee hive. They gave us a ride into Mammoth Lakes. We wandered around and started searching for a place to stay. The first place we came to only had one room and at a higher price than we wanted. We ended up staying at the Econo Lodge a little further down the street. After we got our room squared away and cleaned up ourselves we went in search of food. Wandered for a while and eventually ate at a place called Grumpy’s. Then went back to the room and passed out.