pinecrest

At the end of june I went camping at pinecrest campground with my mom and my friend jack. Jack came over to my house, and we dropped off the dog at my aunt’s house. Once we got back, we finished packing up the car and got on our way. My mom asked me if I could drive for a little bit, and so I did. I actually ended up driving the entire two and a half hours to pinecrest, where we started setting up our tents. After we finished setting up our tents, me and jack walked to the lake where we got in and swam for about an hour. We then got back to the campsite and went to the general store where we bought firewood and ice. We then ate dinner and had a farkle tournament where I won one round and my mom won another round. We then had some smores and went to sleep around 10. Or at least we tried to go to sleep. People showed up to the campsite next to us around 11:30 and began to set up their campsite. This was very annoying and also very loud. We ended up getting basically no sleep that night. The second day, we went on a ten mile hike up to cleo’s bath which is a system of teapots and waterfalls above pinecrest lake. It was quite difficult once we reached the rock climbing section. We met some people coming down who told us that about a week prior to when we were there, a person got swept up by the water and ended up passing away. We continued our hike towards the top where we met some people with camera equipment who were there to document a Search and Rescue operation to find the body. As you could probably imagine there was basically no one at the top which is a nice change of pace from usual, but we didn’t go in and ate lunch. We went back down and had to go the short way back since we didn’t bring enough water for the full hike and went back to the lake where me and jack got in again. We swam around for a few hours which felt great after our very long hike, and we then went back to the campsite where we changed into normal clothes. We then went back to the general store and bought a deck of cards, more ice, and more firewood. We also went into another store and bought a hat and shirt for my grandpa. We went back to the campsite and played cards. We played the game trash, where you start with ten cards which you have to get ace through ten with king as wild card and other face cards as useless cards. If you win a round you lose one card. I eventually won in the fastest game of trash we have every played with me have 0 cards, and jack having 6 and my mom having 8. We then ate dinner and sat around the campfire for a while. Around 10:30 we walked down to the lake to take some long exposure photos of the starts which we had just learned that we could do. We then went back and attempted to go to sleep. Like the previous night, we got basically no sleep, but just for a different reason. We discovered while hiking that those same neighboring campers had a baby with them, which meant, if they couldn’t sleep, neither could we. Their car alarm also went off about 6 times. Basically every time the baby started crying the dad would take the baby out of his tent, and walk closer to our site and just let the baby cry. We were not very happy. I later learned that around 3am my mom started looking at hotels nearby because the lack of sleep was really just that bad. I eventually woke up from about 2 hours of sleep at 6:30 in the morning where I layed down in the hammock for about 30 minutes, when me and my mom started packing everything up. When we finished packing everything up, we got in the car and left. We stopped for breakfast at a starbucks in sonora, and from there we stopped for water at a gas station in stockton, from which we then went home. I went and picked up the dog from my aunt’s house and I stayed at my house and did summer break things for the rest of the day. Overall, it was an interesting trip. From no sleep to the seeing a helicopter carrying the body that the SAR divers were searching for at cleo’s bath, and no sleep again, we still managed to have fun while we were there.

My current Challenge progress as of December 23, 2024.