Far Away in the Mountains

There is a campground at Highland Lakes, in the Sierras, that the older siblings designated as their camping retreat destination. And little old me got to tag along.
It seems logical to start here:
The description of the unpaved road to the campsite included reference to a seasonal stream that had to be crossed. Perhaps I am young, perhaps I am used to driving the truck, perhaps when I hear 'seasonal stream' I think it will be quit small by the end of July... Lets just say I was not the one who brought rubber boots to wade into said stream to gauge its depth. And good thing we decided (due in part to this seasonal stream phenomena) to take Bucky because there was no way Sam and I were putting all our junk in his little car. The stream, as you may guess, turned out to be a trickle. Better safe than sorry!

In due course we managed to pick a campground that suited us, and to my dismay it was COLD. If not for the near constant buffeting of the wind, it would have been pleasant. As it was I neglected to bring pants (besides pjs) so I was good and goose prickly. We did a bit of hiking (some of it perilous and death defying, you'll see!), some cooking, a tiny bit of swimming... all things necessary to make a good camping trip.


Instead of the usual division by plant, animal landscape... it makes more sense for me to do it as days.

Arrival day

We went on a short walk to explore a bit, and work out the kinks of getting bounced around on five miles of gravel road. These marvelous specimens are called Skyrockets (Ipomopsis aggregata).

Larkspur of some variety.

 Alpine lily (Lilium parvum)

 Two fritillaries duking out a damp spot for mineral uptake.

 The Orthopterans made quit  ruckus, the leg/wind rubbing in whatever species living in the area is a particularly loud buzzing near rattle sound.

Having never (knowingly) seen a Gentian before, I am rather thrilled to present to you Explorer's Gentian (Gentiana calycosa)!





Day 1
In the morning I walked around one of the little  highland lakes... Found a few monkey flowers

Another skyrocket, because they are pretty delightful.

The place was absolutely teeming with Corn Lilies (also False Hellebore, Veratrum californicum), up to five or six feet high. 

On the left is the Swamp onion (Allium validum), to the right what I think is a crimson columbine (Aquilegia formosa)

 

 Whats this? An orchid! Why of course! Ha! Some sort white bog orchid in the Platanthera genus.

Perhaps the most stunning plant of all (This early in the entry? That's the crux of chronological documentation...) I think was the Sierra or Mountain Larkspur (Delphinium glaucum). These plants were in some places much taller than me. What with being accustomed to Delphiniums reaching my shin at most, I found them very impressive.

Lonicera spp, known more commonly as twinberry because they come in pairs. This odd fuzzball ... Ranger's Buttons (Spenosciadium capitellum), member of the carrot family. Now you know.

 A little gooseberry getting riper

 A pair of hummingbirds was acting protective to one side of the lake. My guess is they had a nest in the vicinity... A Rufous maybe? Even found Martha some shooting stars! (Dodecatheon jeffereyi).

If rambling about nature bouquets seems familiar, you must be Phoebasaurus devotee. Have a sage/buckwheat/artemisia bouquet!

 Some sort of white (and native!) thistle and a wooly aster disaster.

There were two sparse patches of snow up the mountain side from the campground, so exploring we endeavored to go. It took us a rather long time to get no place in particular, but that's ok.
Gratuitous butterfly picture!

We were up some 8,000 ft so the views were, you know, pretty.

 Its always a good day when you can run across a few dozen Mariposa lilies (Calochortus leichtlinii)

 The favored pose of small-flower photographers...

 These funky flowers are called Little Elephant Heads (Pendicularis attolens). See the little trunk?

 Highland lakes

 We delicately tiptoed over ankle cracking glacial debris. Climbing always means lots of butt shots, unless you're a gazelle and run ahead of the leaders.

 Destination achieved! Now lets throw filthy snow at each other!

Happy happy monkey flowers

Some rather generic looking daisy type flowers

 Lots of white sage, some purple sage, buckwheat and some red indian paintbrush in abundance

Time for more butterflies!

I decided to capitalize on the fact that I was with relatives capable of taking (good) pictures of people, so that there is evidence I was there, not just my camera.

 Another nice clump of lilies, and some particularly vibrant lichens adorning the rock face.





Day 2
Somehow I thought I was going to be able to keep this short... A breeze... HA!
So the next morning I walked around the other lake... But not before this monstrous mushroom caught my eye.

There were two kinds of lupine, this little guy was different from any other lupine I've seen, being tiny for one thing, and extra fuzzy. This (right) looks like a very small penstemon, but I'm running low on identification juice.

 These pink paintbrushes were small, maybe 6 inches high at most, and in a boggy area unlike the many other dry area species.

 Seems like a good time for more butterflies

 Finally! Ha!

 Not the greatest quality, but you get the picture (hardy har har!)

 Somehow I didn't take many food pictures, but I think we'll survive. This sparkling beetle is a Buprestid, a Jewel beetle. They are wood borers, our professor told us they were generally bullet shaped and shiny. And I wanted to see one ever since. Done and Done!

We set out to climb to a peak above our campsite (at no little urging from me). A runoff creek bed provided a lush array wildflowers.

 So, up we went!

The higher we got the more of this  brilliant sage (Salvia of some sort) there was to be had.

 Lets point at things! Sage and buckwheat bouquet.

What on earth is happening here!? I have no idea. Someone enlighten me.... please?  My unfounded guess is that the smaller is male, and he's protecting his uuuhh investment in the female. 

 This is the perilous life threatening bit. Of course the camera does a poor job of portraying the exact slope, but it would be quit a slide through glacial scree (hundreds of feet) before you would be able to stop yourself.

 But the cowboys made it up!

 I'm standing about five feet behind Sarah, the slope at the end approached vertical, so we stopped here and there...

 Looked at this lovely Royal Penstemon (Penstemon speciosus)

 The view proved rather nice.

 Can you spot Sam and his three kinds of camo?

 After a breather at the top, down again we go...

 You've probably noticed that going down is much more difficult. Physically, its about the same, just different muscles. Psychologically, its a whole other can of worms. The problem mainly being that you see all the places that you can trip, and you can see all the way down. Going uphill its pretty easy to throw yourself forward if you feel like you're about to lose purchase, but its much harder to do that in reverse.

 

Having survived without losing a single person to the precipitous drop offs, we (Sam and I) took a quick dip in the very chilly lake. I brought a swim suit (but no pants, yeah, yeah), had to use it!

Wildfire smoke sure makes for nice sunsets...

Departure day
Just enough time for another morning walk

 The wind died down at night so the water was usually pretty glassy come morning.

Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) and that huge larkspur again, but a paler color morph.

Miraculously, more orchids! You have to work a little harder for the first glimpse, but once you see them, they're everywhere! And you wonder how you missed them in the first place.

 Shooting stars! And columbine!

After futzing around with timers and whatnot we managed a group picture. Here we are, in all our glory! Cheerio!