Swall Meadows

So now we're back on that road and we're going to Swall Meadows. Where and why because when I was looking at the map and planning our trip (I spent about 30 hours planning this trip) it was right in the middle of Yosemite and Lone Pine and in the middle of nowhere with some mountains around which is what I look for in life or at least on my adventure holidays. Anyway despite being in the middle of this green green bit on the map - Inyo National Forest - it was actually right next to Mammoth Lakes like a 40 min drive which is a big winter sports mountain resort that they're trying to get people to go to in the summer too. It was summer now, June but we were told the road to Yosemite might not be open yet because of snow and we were lucky because the snow only melted enough the week before we got there to open the road that's my lucky star again I seem to have one of those when on the road. Swall Meadows was cheaper than the bigger Mammoth Lakes and the Airbnb looked sweet when I was looking at the screen back in London all those months ago. The road started curling up towards mountains and now we're seeing snow capped mountains because despite the summer like I said there was still snow on the mountains. If you've ever driven up a long road towards snow capped mountains you know what I mean you sort of feel like the Hobbits going towards Rivendale. The sky was doing a pretty special cloud show for us the horizon stretching back and up and out with more huge white and purple clouds and I think a rainbow even and it was under 2 hours drive to Swall Meadows. There is a town called Bishop on the 395 quite a big town on the way and they happened to be having a market and it was hot now and remember we had just done a big hike up to Lone Pine Lake so we stopped in this big town to get a snack in the market in the park. 

The market was artsy craftsy with tie dyed socks and some quite good paintings from one man and a stall with musical instruments made of of tin cans and a skate park and a country band playing under some trees and all over the place the cotton was blowing and landing on the lake in the park where the ducks were using it to make water beds. There was a man and wife who looked like they had got a horse and carriage to the market bringing their oranges and carrots to make juice. I'm pretty sure the man was chewing on a reed or in my imagination he was and the lady had a smock that was covered in orange juice and their son was wearing a vest with a fuzzy moustache starting to grow on his lip and he was like an overgrown mouse that got stuck on a carriage and taken to a big town by mistake. There was a Chinese food stall and a stall selling ENORMOUS bags of popcorn you would pop if you ate all that popcorn it reminded me of those oversized bags of weird orange maize poufs you get in SA. So we did a wander and glanced in the tie dye stall and it's funny because the tie dye guys come into the story a little later. 

I noticed a very busy shop on the other side of the road and it said bakery on the sign and it was buzzing and it turned out to be Erick Schat's Bakkery which is quite famous in these parts. It was packed inside from floor to ceiling with cakes and bread and dried fruit and jams and pickles and buns and biscuits and an ice cream section and I can tell you that there was one main ingredient in this Hansel and Gretel lair and that was sugar baby. Everyone was sweating waiting in a long snaking line around all the aisles for all this sugar I think it was so busy because it was memorial weekend Friday and we stood in line too to buy some dark brown fruit cake and some fig and ginger jam which turns out to be the best damn jam. Oh and we also got ice cream because it was so hot and sticky and now it was time to really leg it out of Bishop and get to our mountain pad for the night because it was pushing 6.30pm.

The road to Swall Meadows was promising in it's winding and mountain views, we came off the 395 deeper into the valley we went and I thought this would be a teeny little town but actually it was just houses all spread out with the nearest shop a ten minute drive away back up the highway but who cares when you have a car and you're looking at this view. There was a huge fire here in Feb 2015 that covered the mountain side and you can still see some charred and scarred pine trees there seems to be a lot of those in these parts of California. There's a fire warning sign with a bear on it the signal is 'moderate' so we felt safe from fires but wondered if the bear meant something.

Chantal's Airbnb in Swall Meadows is a pretty delightful wooden beamed house and I did wonder why they all build with wood in fire country, we were in high desert so the ground had pale rocky colours with little spiky shrubs and plants and there was one tar road but the rest was this pale blue grey brown rockiness which I loved, as soon as you open the car door that smell of mountain hits you and that's what I can't get enough of, that elation you feel in high desert mountain land. I felt the same in Lower Mustang in Nepal and in Ledakh in India. All the sighs. So we walk up to the house it seems empty besides a portly dark grey curly old doggie who makes it known that we are disturbing his tea time. Chantal finds us and shows us around the beautiful private upstairs room which is all dark soft wood, windows with a mountain or two in the distance, a big bath and the biggest and also it turned out most comfortable bed probably ever. I'm telling you beds are a thing in this country, they're just not the same at home.

We go downstairs to meet some other guests staying in the ground floor rooms and remember I said the tie dye guys would come back in the story well there they were downstairs eating dinner with a couple of beers. There were 3 guys actually, 2 were the tie dye guys from that awesome stall in the Bishop market who were actually from LA and 1 was staying for a massive donkey convention, that's right you heard me - it's called Bishop Mule Day's and it's a festival of donkeys and people come from all over the world to showcase their donkey's or mules and some even bring their prized donkey's from overseas. So these 3 guys were having dinner with Chantal having a jolly time and the fluffy but slightly hissy-if-you-touch-me kitty came to say hello and the cute gruffly dog got all nestled in. Because we didn't bring any dinner and there was nothing in the town as in walkable we got back in the car to get dinner at the only restaurant for miles Tom's Place which was proper country bumpkin style joint with booths and fireplaces and big jugs of beer and huge plates of food, and a very good place to end an extremely eventful day because remember we had climbed Mount Whitney that very morning. We spent the evening trying to guess if any of the guests were hippy types as we were keen to meet some proper California hippies but didn't think so in the end.

Oh, Chantal's place in Swall Meadows I can only recommend it to glorify in the amazing bed and views and quiet and peace and fresh so if you pass by you know where to go.

Danny snoozing in the cool breeze with a mountain in the background

My normal way of holidaying is waking up and going on a mission and on a mission we went to find some lakes in this glacier lake country, Mammoth Lakes was too far but there are plenty of others and I wish I could tell you if it was Bear Lake or Pine Lake or Long Lake or Chicken Foot Lake (did I mention we were in Lake country) but we were recommended a Lake after Chantal called her neighbour to ask which lake we should go to (it was 7:30am but everyone was up in Swall Meadows) so we went there but not before a breakfast of that delicious black fruity bread and ginger and fig jam and coffee and fruit. Us being us we needed a good picnic so on the way to the lake we picked up a turkey sandwich from that famous bakery and definitely some other sweet things that I can't remember and we also drove back to the tie dye stall because the market was still going and got some awesome bamboo tie dye socks for all our walking and also to say hello to the camp LA guys, and drove up some pretty astonishing and increasingly hairy roads to find a lake or two. The first lake we found wasn't too impressive and was more for the fishermen and after Lone Pine Lake on Mount Whitney standards were high. A little further along the way we found another big lake that was surrounded by big slopes of mountain that you could tell were usually covered in snow and now were grey with a few bits of green poking out. The lake had some big bouldery islands and also a pebbly beach and it was a little dusty and dirty and there were some families around fishing or sitting on the beach with kids and dogs and big bottles of Coca Cola. The lake was still and dark blue against the grey sides of the mountain slopes and then you wonder again about glaciers and history and what ants we all are compared to the grinding weight of time and earthly mass. It was one of those lakes where you couldn't hear any sound as if it was absorbed into the water, when someone was around the corner from you the sound just seemed to be sucked into the earth and lake so despite there being people around you didn't hear them until they were almost on top of you so that was eery, and every now again a little boat would cut silently across the lake on the way to some unknown destination and make silent ripples up to our feet as we sat on a big boulder eating our lake snacks. It was definitely also too cold to swim.

The walk on the pebble beach was fun after we picked our way over and through the families fishing strewn about the boulders and Danny taught me how to skim stones I got to four bounces but he had about ten because he's got secret sporty skills. The grey stones and dustiness and blue water and blue sky and bright sun and sound sapping made the hairs stand on my neck a little because we're just not used to silence. There were some grey bleached wooden structures that I climbed in to make yoga meditation pictures and this one structure had a pink sparkly rock in the middle of it. The bright sun and dust then got to me so it was back in the car down the in-places perilous mountain road back to Bishop to get dinner, we were going to make a barbecue on Chantal's porch. I'm pretty sure we drove over a huge snake in the road on our way home but when I turned the car around to see it had disappeared which was a little unnerving poor thing, I wondered if it had clutched underneath our car in anger and was going to strangle us later.

Back home and after a cool breezy snooze with all the windows open we went onto the porch in the Swall Meadows house amongst the grey brown rocks of high desert Sierra Nevada and lit the grill. It smoked a bit and then a crazy squeaking high pitched sound started chirriping on the porch, it sounded like tiny birds all bunched up and cross about something significant and I can't recall who spotted them first but looking up towards the sound revealed some tiny black noses and eyes and claws and the little squeaky kinda cute sound was a gazzilion little baby sized bats all disturbed by the smoke from the fire. They were cute but a little grizzly and reminded me of little fat spiders and then one then another then bunches of them like butterflies started flying out the crack and towards me and out the porch so I'm not ashamed to say I gave a very loud squeal and covered my face but was also fascinated by these little squeaking juicy kitten spider bats. Then to add to the excitement a big sound like a neighbourhood alarm went off and I thought that must be the fire alarm and did we set it off with our barbecue? So now the whole neighbourhood is flitting out from under the rafters due to the smoke and it went on and I sent Chantal a non panicked message and she said not to worry it might be a drill definitely not the barbecue on the porch so at least we didn't set off the entire mountain side fire alarm with our dinner attempt. After that excitement I managed to get the food ready oh what a feast so we had buttery corn and fire baked sweet potatoes and spicy cinnamon jerk chicken and avocado and salad leaves and tomato and red California wine and it was delicious. Chantal came home from her work as a sculpture / furniture designer I think something along those lines and told us in her cute American French way how she came to America from France when she was 18 and fell into random little jobs and met an American man and ended up staying and bringing up her children and she couldn't quite believe how long she'd been there and I felt a little like I was talking to myself in 20 years time. She lived a quiet and somewhat isolated life on this beautiful mountainside and wouldn't have it any other way and I felt a lot affection for her.

Then she could no longer ignore the funny portly pooch of the house who was politely reminding us all that it was time for his walk, despite the fact that there were no fences and he could just walk around the neighbourhood as he pleased he waited patiently every evening for his human to take him for a walk. He was quite popular as some neighbours asked to borrow him to take him on mountain walks so he had his picks of days out. The sun was starting to set and make dramatic pinks in the sky and as in all high desert country places as soon as the sun goes a nip comes in the air and we set out with a brisk pace to walk through the trees and small dry river beds and burnt pines of Swall Meadows on a summer's evening. And just everywhere you looked there was some kooky spiky plant or little pink flower and she said that all these new flowers were blooming because of the fire that happened last winter and fires are good at making way for new life. The sun set more and more but the purple snow capped mountain gave off a beautiful light and the portly pooch ran ahead and told us where to go and we pointed and pranced and breathed deep. There was a dry river bed but then surprisingly as we didn't realise there was in front of us a big deep wide rocky valley with all those millions of rocks probably from another huge volcano blast that happened millions upon millions of years ago. And you can't do anything with these volcanic rocks as they just crumble if you try build with them so you got to just live with them and let themselves drape all over and up the sides of steep valleys and make ledges and shapes and turrets and tunnels and porches all along the valley at precarious angles for you to sit on and scurry over and watch the sky darken and the pinks disappear.

Chantal showing us the hood