Things to do in Mammoth, Part III: Hiking Devil's Postpile National Monument

Catch up on the rest of the series here! 

Part I, Part II

The Next morning (our third in Mammoth), we got up early (as is the norm when you camp, don'tcha know?) and hiked out to Devil's Postpile National Monument. It was formed when the mammoth valley was filled with lava; something caused the cooling rock to split in vertical formations that look like giant posts!

It was pretty cool to see, but everyone and their grandmother thought that too so it was pretty crowded, even though it was the middle of the week and the rest of mammoth had been pretty much deserted.

We then hiked down to Rainbow Falls, which too was gorgeous and lauded by many.  The canyon is formed in such a way that whenever the sun shines, it hits the spray from the waterfall at the exact right angle to create a rainbow. Every day.

We had initially intended on having lunch down at the waterfall's pool, but I had managed to strain my hip at some point along the hike so I didn't trust myself to navigate a bazillion stairs. Instead, we hiked another mile down to Lower Falls, which was outside the "national monument" classification and therefore was less groomed and thus, less occupied. Sure enough, we had an entire valley to ourselves!

The hike itself ws lovely, but the destination was spectacular, made better by the fact that we shared it with no one. Lower Falls was the way to go, for sure.

We found a cool shaded spot within view of the waterfall and bathing pool before it and opened up our picnic. It was pretty clear that our pup was pretty much toast at this point! Poor thing had been going nonstop all week. We rested for a good long while to make sure she was good to make the remainder of our hike back. 

Once we'd climbed out of the valley, though, I'll admit that we had to take a bus the remaining half mile to our car, because all three of us were pooped! 

We headed back to the condo a few hours before dark. We cooked some steaks, floated in the hot tub until our toes were prunes and our muscles like jello, and crashed. The next day would be a big hiking day too: we were headed to Mammoth Mountain!