Exploring on vacation

Here's the one puzzle I finished.

I have so many pictures and stories from Mammoth to share, but my head is filled with preparations for Denmark.  I am afraid if I don't write a little something now that all the old memories of adventures will be pushed aside by new memories.  So here is a little something.

If you look carefully you can see the hexagons.  

R. would be happy to tell you why they are hexagons.

This is the view from below.

The first two days were physically challenging.  We took the shuttle to Devil's Postpile National Monument and hiked to the see the top of the columnar basalt.  From there we headed to Rainbow Falls 

and then onto Red's Meadow Resort for lunch (the resort part is a relative term - if you have been hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and camping, then this is definitely a resort since it had showers and hot food).  And just to satisfy my desire to be by water, we took the shuttle to Sotcher Lake and dipped our toes in before heading back to the condo to make dinner.

The physical challenge for the next day was involved cycling the Lakes Basin Path to a few lakes.

The specks on the path are A. and D.

Some people took their bikes on the shuttle and only rode down, but we saved ourselves a little money (added a few groans) by riding both up and down.

I am behind the camera, A. is fishing, and the others are in the canoe.

After lunch we went back to Twin Lakes and rented a canoe, which both kids had a turn to use.  A friendly family let A. use a fishing rod, which he figured out after a few tries (but thankfully didn't catch anything).

The biggest problem we had was with smoke from the Aspen Fire.  The fire wasn't so close, but the air quality and visibility were negatively impacted.  We tried to do our most strenuous activities early in the day and take it easy in the afternoon.