This past weekend, we went up to go backpacking in the June Lake area. The idea was that we would hike over from the Rush Creek trail head to Thousand Island Lake, and then make our way back out the next day.
However, the hike was fraught with disaster, not least of which was taking the wrong turn to get to Thousand Island Lake. So instead we accidentally made our way up to Gem Lake.
It also turned out to be the hottest day on record for the area, so I ended up drinking at least 4.5 liters just on the way up to Gem Lake. Poor Doc got altitude sickness after we got to Gem Lake, almost certainly because of how hot it was that day (he had also drank about 4 liters of water at that point), so we made our way back down. The further down we went, the better Doc felt.
It was not an ideal backpacking trip at all, but everybody made it out alive and uninjured. Of course it is always a little bit sad when you have to turn back, but it is much better to do so before things get any worse. I’ll admit that some of the things that went wrong were due to pure dumb luck, and that some were due to poor planning. At the point we turned back, so many things had already gone wrong, that I am very glad we did so.
While some of us were back down by Silver Lake and having breakfast at the resort and waiting for the rest of our group to come down from their campsite, a woman started sketching me and then asked if we were Christians. We told her no, and she seemed quite shocked at this.
She asked if we were Jewish and seemed upset that most of us were atheist. However, she also seemed upset that AJ was Muslim, so I don’t know if her big problem was with atheism specifically or just any alternative belief system. We all kept trying to change the subject, to talk about the lake or the weather, anything but religion; to no avail. When Eric came down from the trail, she was shocked at his facial piercings and got nastier and nastier in her comments towards us.
Which was too bad, she seemed very nice to start with, and we would have been more than happy to continue to talk with her about non-religious topics. But, since her first question for us was “Are you Christians?” I suppose she wasn’t much interested in talking about anything else.
She said she doesn’t like San Francisco because of the types of people that live there, and well… we are the types of people that live in San Francisco so I suppose we shouldn’t be so shocked that she didn’t care for us.
She was so nice, until she wasn’t.