Marmot city

Miles: 9.0
Start time: 7:48am
End time: 3:05pm
High / Avg / Low temp: 82.9F / 67.8F / 55.3F
Relative Humidity Avg: 18.1%
Injuries: none to report

One thing they don't tell you when your go camping is how bright a full moon is thru a thin tent.. It feels like a street light.. But slowly migrates thru the sky, I miss no moons

Our camp spot was pretty nice, and no interlopers so even better. We did however confirm our suspicion that the location was infested with marmots.  We saw our first one, massive, sitting happily in the middle of the trail just up from our camp, he was eyeballing us but as we were a lil away from him taking photos he didn't seem in a hurry to move, only when we started getting much closer did he shuffle along, one foot into the bushes, probably just waiting for us to leave so he could get back to his sunbeam.  He wasn't alone, we saw three others perched on rocks in the meadow next to us, was very cute.

As we started our climb up to the top of our mountains peak, a new record for us in elevation,  10,571 ft, we saw two deer, these had black tips on their tails, and merrily bounded on their way when they saw us, managed to snag a photo too.

One thing I didn't get a photo of today was of the fighter jets soaring through the valleys and meadows of the Sierra, they travel faster than sound so by the time you hear them they are easily behind another mountain, must be a fun ride for them.

At the peak of our climb we also saw mt Whitney in the distance, if we make it up that one it'll be a definite personal best for elevation, and the highest point in lower 48 states.

We hiked to the next water source today, and the.. Puddle.. By the trail.. was manky.. Stagnant, and we weren't having it.  We ended up tracing it's flow back some distance and at least got some relatively clear,  we filtered and treated it with chlorine to be safe.  Later in the evening another hiker found an even better source and we gathered another gallon, just to be sure.

We saw an owl today, I can't recall the name but I'll paste a photo here sometime

We started off as the first folk here with a tent, and being ever so popular another 3 tents at least have popped up on our vicinity, its a huge area with loads of sites mind you..

So it's nap time, later gators