Steve and Jaime: Camping at Twin Lakes

Last weekend we went up to Twin Lakes to go camping, just me and Steve. The lakes/campground are 3 miles west of Mammoth Lakes. I've been up there, but never knew this area existed. Here's a map of the lakes...they are actually two lakes, joined together in the middle.

On the way up, Steve took me to some places that he had been to with his Geology class back when he went to CLU. The first was called Fossil Falls. You can learn about it here. It's a 440,000 year old basalt lava flow, eroded by the now extinct Owens River. The water smoothed and carved the rocks so that they now look like fossils, thus the name.

Here's Steve on top of the falls.

And me climbing down in them.

This is Red Hill, an old cinder cone

Next we drove to Lee Vining, which is actually 20 miles north of our campground and stopped for lunch at Whoa Nellie's Deli which is, believe it or not, located in the Mobil Gas Station. I discovered it about 5 years ago when I worked on a Pontiac commercial up there. It's the best food around. And it has a great view of Mono Lake. Steve had pork tacos and I had fish ones. Each came with a side of Brazilian black beans. It was great to have a nice lunch before we transitioned to sandwiches and hot dogs for the rest of the weekend.

After lunch we drove to our campsite and got set up. It was a really great site, level and shaded. We went exploring and found the place to rent boats and scouted out places for Steve to fish (and me to read). We spent the rest of the weekend fishing (him), reading (me) and we also hiked to this really cool waterfall and took a boat out on the lake to fish (him) and read (me). The lake was absolutely beautiful and the area was pretty quiet, so it was a great relaxing trip!