Leon Turnbull Photography

On the next morning of camping, I crawled out of my cozy sleeping bag even earlier, and I think it was even colder than the previous morning. I could not get my dog, Kaya, to come with me this time. She is such a wimp. I didn’t really want to take her anyway, cuz I wasn’t planning on going on any much of a hike.

I drove back up the hill from Devil’s Postpile Natl. Monument to Twin Lakes, which is near the village of Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth Lakes is at a higher elevation, and there was a lot more snow still hanging around. Strangely enough, though, it was colder down at Devil’s Postpile. It was still quite dark as I began driving from the campsite. As I drove along, I thought to myself that this is a good time of day to see bears. Whenever I see them, it is usually at this time of day, before sunrise. Then I thought to myself, yeah, I’d better be careful to stay awake and not hit any with the car (I still hadn’t had any coffee yet). Or, I thought, I’d better be careful not to hit any deer, or any other kind of animal that might be out and about. Immediately after this thought, I see a fat, little, porcupine waddling across the road in front of my car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a porcupine in the wild before, so it was neat to see one. I stopped the car and watched it on the side of the road. It flicked up its tail at me, and so I decided to keep going before it flung its quills into my tires (did you ever see the Veggie Tales’ Jonah movie?). Then immediately after seeing the porcupine, I saw a black bear in the meadow beside the road. It was just a small bear, maybe only 1 year old (like I know how to tell a bear’s age), and it scampered away as soon as he saw my car. No sign of any momma bear around.

So anyway, on up to Twin Lakes and Twin Falls. I wanted to get there by sunrise. I knew the sun would be hitting the falls first thing in the morning. Twin Falls is a spectacular cascade falling about 250 ft. down from Lake Mamie, and is best seen in the spring when the snow is melting. It is quite impressive. The name of the waterfall is not really much of a mystery. It is not because there are 2 waterfalls. It is named after the lakes that it drops into: Twin Lakes. But the name of the lakes is quite a mystery, and quite silly. There are not 2 “twin” lakes. There are actually 3 lakes. Why they called them Twin Lakes is completely beyond me. I vote to change the names to Triplet Lakes, and Triplet Falls. Yeah, that sounds better.

It is possible to get right up to the base of Twin Falls, but I did not bother, though if I had more time I would have certainly done that. Instead, I wanted to get to a certain other waterfall before the sun got too high in the sky. So off I went to find it.