Mammoth is a cool destination for skiing in California , but we usually ski once a year and go to either Colorado or Lake Tahoe . I’d always heard stories of the traffic being a nightmare trying to go to ski resorts in CA. Mike is a member of the website Meet Up and joined a group that likes to camp and hike. A member made up an event to attend Mammoth’s Bluesapalooza. Mike forwarded me the info and I said sure, let’s go. If nothing else, it would be a good excuse to finally get up to Mammoth to check it out.
Mike RSVP’d and we sent our $10 fee to the organizer so we’d have a spot at the group camp site. Neither of us had attended a meet up event with this group, but we thought why not? camp with some random people and enjoy Mammoth and this festival. We ended up not spending more than a few hours with the group anyway.
Friday
We left on a Friday morning around 7am to beat and avoid some of the morning commuters and LA area traffic. We took the route up the 15 and connected to 395. 395 is a two-lane highway that goes through some desert and is kind of a dry, boring drive. We kept driving along wondering who would live out in the middle of nowhere and wondered what they would do all day or for fun. Once we got outside of Bishop, we started climbing the Sierra Mountains
Within a half an hour of leaving Bishop, we were stopping at the Visitor Center Devils Postpile Monument Rainbow Falls
We still had about an hour before we were technically allowed to check into camp, so we headed off to find a grocery store for a few supplies. We knew we were going to be at the festival most of the time, so we didn’t need but the usual supplies: fire wood, stuff for smores, and beer. We got back on 
Set with supplies that we later hardly used, we found the entrance to the campgrounds and made our way to our group site. We got to the site and saw a small one-person tent set up and that was it. We decided what the heck; we’ll set up our tent and see who shows up. Once we had our tent up, the owner of the other tent showed up. He turned out to be practically our neighbor back in San Diego
As soon as we were planning to head off to get some dinner and listen to some blues music, another couple pulled up. They didn’t have tickets to the Friday night events, so after making our introductions, we headed off with our new friend, Sam, to get on the trolley. Mammoth has a great trolley system that goes around town allowing people to get on and off throughout town. For the Bluesapalooza, they had separate trolleys that dropped us off right in front of the entrance.
Friday night was a great night at the festival. We had received a free meal ticket with our tickets, so we could pick from select booths to have a free dinner. The longest line was at a booth that had BBQ brisket, but it wasn’t on our list…bummer! We opted for the booth making Hawaiian BBQ. We were given pork, salad made with pineapple, coconut and mango, and 2 sweet rolls (instead of a bun). The food was pretty decent! Mammoth Brewing Co. was providing the beer for the evening, so we enjoyed tasting a few different beers. My favorite was their pear cider, it was so good! We meant to pick up some from the store to bring home with us, but forgot!! The evening’s music consisted of 2 bands, Jon Justice Band and Ruthie Foster. Both were great bands, but Ms. Foster rocked!
We hopped on the trolley and it dropped us off at the campground entrance after the show. When we got back to camp, there was another party that had arrived, but the organizer of the gathering was already sleeping. We sat around the campfire getting to know one another and telling stories for a while before turning in for the night.
Saturday
We woke up before everyone else at camp and headed off for some breakfast. We searched our Yelp app and decided the Breakfast Club was the best option. We had to wait about 10 minutes for a table when we arrived. The restaurant is decorated like an old farmhouse. The décor included flower wallpaper and lace and cows. I ordered an omelet with a blue berry muffin and Mike had two eggs with ham and a homemade biscuit with a side of gravy. It was so much food, but not bad. They were really busy and our server kept saying she would bring us more coffee every time she brought something to our table. Finally, she came back again for like a third time and asked if we needed more coffee as if she forgot she kept saying she was getting us some.
After our enormous breakfast, we decided on making our way out to do a little hiking at Devils Postpile. We got out there around 9am and didn’t have a clue as to how the shuttle system worked. There were signs saying it was mandatory that you took a shuttle to get to Devils Postpile. I don’t know if that’s really true because once we were on the shuttle, there were other cars on the road. We bought our tickets anyway for the shuttle and were told we’d have to wait another 30 minutes or longer for shuttle 4. When shuttle 2 was loading, the guy asked if anyone would like to stand in the aisle of this shuttle. We happened to be right there, so we said we would. We got on the shuttle full of day hikers and overnight hikers and had to stand in the aisle until the first stop unloaded about 5 overnight hikers. Then, we had a seat the rest of the time.
We got off at stop 6 for Devils Postpile and started our hike. We made it to this amazing phenomenon of the Postpile within a few minutes. Devils Postpile is a dark cliff of columnar basalt created by a lava flow sometime between less than 100,000 years ago to 700,000 years ago, according to Wikipedia. We also found out later that it used to be included in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park Inyo Forest towards Rainbow Falls
It was a nice walk to get to the falls; we were one of few on the trail in between the 2 attractions, so it was pretty quiet. We could still smell the pines and saw little squirrels everywhere. They were the smallest squirrels I’d ever seen. We arrived at the falls and there were several people standing and sitting around enjoying its view. We walked down some steps to get a view at the base of the falls as well.
We made our way back to stop 10 to catch the shuttle back to the parking lot and got back to our car a little after 1pm. We’d stayed a little longer than we’d originally planned, but it was nice to do some hiking. We went back to our campsite to drop off the car and grab our gear for the festival. Then, we were off for the beer tasting part of the festival.
We got to the festival around 2pm and it was packed! We found out later people were waiting in line several hours before the gates opened to get good seats. We walked around so many people to try and find a spot for our 2 chairs that we brought this time. The website said you could only have low beach chairs, but we saw tons of captain chairs on Friday, that we decided to bring ours on Saturday. We finally found a place to squeeze into that was close to the food and beer. We grabbed some of the BBQ from the place that had the long line that night before and it was pretty good also. We then took turns going back into the beer tasting section to find 2 different beers to try and bringing them back to our seats. We had some good beer and some not so good beer. Some of our favorites included Trout Slayer, Acai Wheat Berry
After the beer tasting was over, we were able to move our chairs up to another spot that we still couldn’t see the stage, but we could hear the music better. We enjoyed listening to most of the music, but ended up leaving the festival to have dinner outside the festival. We didn’t really want anymore BBQ. We found a little pizza place in the village area. We grabbed some coffee afterwards as it was a little cool and made our way back the festival for a couple more hours. We left before Los Lonely Boys finished.
We made our way back to the campsite and another party had arrived, the organizers son and his family. And, we also finally go to meet the organizer, Holly! But, we were so tired from being out all day, that we said hello and headed off to sleep.
Sunday
We slept a little later than I’d expected, but were able to say goodbye to everyone and leave to grab some food for the road. We decided instead of going back home the same way, we’d drive the Tioga Pass through Yosemite on the way home. Since we were so close to the Yosemite entrance, why not, I’d heard it was an amazing drive and wanted to do it someday anyway. We grabbed some food and coffee from Schat’s Bakery. There was a line wrapped around the place and to the door when we got there. We had to wait about 15-20 minutes, but our breakfast sandwiches and coffee were really good. We grabbed a couple of pastries for the road as well!
By the time we headed out of Mammoth and got to the turnoff for 120 and the Yosemite east entrance, we made it to the entrance by 10am. There was a line of cars waiting to get into the park. I was hoping they’d wave us through like they did when we came in the South entrance over Memorial Weekend. I guess traffic was backed up too much they had to start letting people in for free. That happened to us both days we went into the park that weekend. That didn’t happen this time however; we had to pay the park free.
Finally in the park, we drove and stopped and took photos and enjoyed the lovely scenery of Yosemite . It really is a beautiful park, one of my favorites. I can’t wait to go back again to do some more hiking and camping. We made our way through the park and was making good timing until we started down towards the south entrance near Mariposa Grove. They are repairing the roads, so we had to drive on gravel at many points. We finally made it out of the park, stopped for some Subway in Oakhurst and made the long trip home to San Diego
We had a nice time in Mammoth and hope to get to make it up there to ski someday.
Trip Summary
Lodging - Pine Glen Group Camp Site #11
Food - Breakfast Club, Bear Creek Pizza, Schat's Bakery
Activities - Bluesapalooza, Devils Postpile Monument,Yosemite National Park
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