On my last trip up the hill, my back hurt. I don’t know why. It just does sometimes, and after a week, it subsides. I never know if it is good for it to get taken for a walk or if I should just lie on the floor on ice.

I decided to ignore the thing and go hiking after taking an aspirin. With my friend K and Trail Guy, we headed up toward Eagle Meadow. I was anticipating some great flowers.

It was kind of hot, and steeper than it used to be. Each time I stopped, I got light-headed. Is this because I am 66? Fat? Pre-diabetic? Neuropathy in my feet? Whatever, I didn’t like it.

Trail Guy went on ahead while K and I stood there waiting for the blood to return to my head. I realized that I was seeing spots. They looked like purple flowers, but they were blurry and kept moving. Oh-oh.

I told K that I was going to listen to my body and head back to the cabin once the spots subsided. She said she’d come with me because she didn’t want to find me lying on the trail later. I said, “Don’t worry—someone else will get there first. Besides, you need to let Trail Guy know that I’m going back.”

She agreed, and we parted ways. I took a handful of crummy photos for you.

That’s Crystal Creek running down in an almost invisible ribbon across the canyon.

You can see Empire in the distance, and I think there were a few purple flowers in the foreground. Hmmm, maybe I was hallucinating.

SEE?? There WERE some purple flowers. So there.

These folks passed me. An umbrella on the trail? Yeppers. That’s the second one I’ve encountered this year.

Mr. Umbrella was a very interesting man. I caught up to them and we walked the last mile down together. He is a caver (probably not the correct title), someone who protects caves around the state (maybe even the country—I didn’t ask), gives tours, and does much more, including cave rescues. I learned that if a person wants to explore a cave, he should look up his “local grotto” (I don’t know if that is an organization called “Local Grotto” or if it is called “Grotto”) and find the local branch. Each cave has trustees, and a trustee will help you explore the cave, assuming you have the proper climbing gear and experience.

I was fine when I got home, and by the time you are reading this, my back is probably also fine. I don’t understand the extreme low blood pressure, or the spots, or why the trail is steeper this year.

Can someone please stop the clock and the calendar for me?

Here, let’s have a few not crummy photos from the next day when I walked down the road.

Then I saw this car. Not a Honda, but Toyota is fine too. Our two pick-‘em-up trucks are Toyotas. The car has no model on it. Look at the color! I peeked in the window and it is a stick shift. I almost put a card under the windshield saying “Please call me if you want to sell this car”. Of course I want to know the model, the year, the mileage, but oh my, it looked like my dream car, a younger Fernando in Toyota instead of Honda.

Momscar is a fine piece of transportation, but I NEED this car!

Oh grow up, Central California Artist, you are 66, not 16.

Sigh.

Another unpaid advertisement for The Mules of MK

This is a reminder that The Mules of Mineral King (is available on Kevin’s site and also on the big A— The Mules of Mineral King.