After Friday Night Halfway... Saturday ALL the Way. And Back Home!
You know what comes after Friday Night Halfway, right? Saturday all the way. And in today's case, the rest of the way there and all the way back.
We awoke today in Fresno, having driven there last night. We didn't roll from the hotel until 8:45am despite having set alarms for 7am. I snoozed mine a few times before getting up and let Hawk sleep in 'til she woke naturally. (Okay, I did open the drapes gradually to help promote her natural awakening. 😅) But it was okay that we got a not-the-crack-of-dawn start because we'd already covered 160-ish miles of driving the night before. With a few more stops along the way up into the mountains we got to the trailhead, ready to hike, at 11:45am.
We enjoyed a great hike up into the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, we saw a bunch of Dinkey lakes. Four and a half of them. We got back down to the car just after 5pm, and we were beat. We'd hiked 7 miles and gained almost 1,000' of elevation... starting above 8,500'.
It took 45 minutes of driving just to get back to a paved road, then another 1:15 to get down to the Fresno metro area, where we ate a quick dinner. On the drive down the mountain we discussed doing a Saturday Night Halfway- halfway home- by staying in Fresno as we weren't sure we'd have the energy for another 3+ hours of driving.
Dinner rejuvenated us, though. And Saturday night traffic wasn't like Friday afternoon traffic.... The drive home would only be 2:45 straight through. We made plans to split the driving roughly in half with a stop to switch drivers in Los Banos. And, of course, we stopped for ice cream at Baskin-Robbins while switching. 🤣
We pulled up in front of our house at 10:45pm. We made quick work of unloading our gear from the past 31 hours of travel and parked the car in the garage. By 11pm I was already taking a shower to clean up from the dusty trail and start winding down for the night.
We awoke today in Fresno, having driven there last night. We didn't roll from the hotel until 8:45am despite having set alarms for 7am. I snoozed mine a few times before getting up and let Hawk sleep in 'til she woke naturally. (Okay, I did open the drapes gradually to help promote her natural awakening. 😅) But it was okay that we got a not-the-crack-of-dawn start because we'd already covered 160-ish miles of driving the night before. With a few more stops along the way up into the mountains we got to the trailhead, ready to hike, at 11:45am.
We enjoyed a great hike up into the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, we saw a bunch of Dinkey lakes. Four and a half of them. We got back down to the car just after 5pm, and we were beat. We'd hiked 7 miles and gained almost 1,000' of elevation... starting above 8,500'.
It took 45 minutes of driving just to get back to a paved road, then another 1:15 to get down to the Fresno metro area, where we ate a quick dinner. On the drive down the mountain we discussed doing a Saturday Night Halfway- halfway home- by staying in Fresno as we weren't sure we'd have the energy for another 3+ hours of driving.
Dinner rejuvenated us, though. And Saturday night traffic wasn't like Friday afternoon traffic.... The drive home would only be 2:45 straight through. We made plans to split the driving roughly in half with a stop to switch drivers in Los Banos. And, of course, we stopped for ice cream at Baskin-Robbins while switching. 🤣
We pulled up in front of our house at 10:45pm. We made quick work of unloading our gear from the past 31 hours of travel and parked the car in the garage. By 11pm I was already taking a shower to clean up from the dusty trail and start winding down for the night.