Sat 10/7/2017

Woke up early but William still managed to smile on the way.

Stop at Mc. Donald for breakfast

Spent the whole night (Friday) packing without sleep.  Departed around 6:10 AM.  Went to Pho 54 but it closed so we went to Pho Vie which opens 24 hours to buy Pho; that was our dinner.  Stopped by Cajon junction to buy breakfast for William at McDonald but he didn’t eat it.  William woke up since we brought him to the car from bed.

Arrived to Bishop around 1 PM.  William wanted to get out of the car seat and felt asleep on my thigh after I got back from Bishop Visitor Center.  Tim bought lunch (cheese burger, french fries, drink) from Carl’s Jr. near by so that when William woke up he had something to eat.  We let William slept for about half hour then continue our way to North Lake.

On the way to North Lake (freeway 168) we saw a beautiful pond near the Cardinal Village and decided to stop.  It turned out we spent lots of time here; by 5 PM it was getting late so we left this beautiful area to head to the Juniper Springs Resort in Mammoth Lakes, which is 40 minutes from Bishop.

Dinner: Pho.  Dessert: Moon cake with tea.  William had a chocolate cup cake.

Not sure if it’s the high elevation that I had a headache; this happened last year too, so it must be the elevation.

Cardinal Village Resort – View from hwy 168

Reflection in the Cardinal lake

Our first trip to find the autumn leaves since our now 3-year old boy William was born.

The weather forecast said the storm was coming to Mammoth Lakes on late Friday till Monday.  All we could do was to hope that the forecast would change.

We stayed at the Juniper Spring Resort, which is only a few minutes drive from the Mammoth Lake downtown.

We left our house around 8:30 AM; Our first stop on the way to Mammoth Lakes was Thien Vien Chan Nguyen (thienvienchannguyen.net, 20635 US-395, Adelanto, CA 92302), which is about 3 hours driving from Orange County.  The place is beautiful and quiet because there were only a few ladies who were kneeling and praying in front of those huge Buddha statues.

William loved it here; he ran around so fast that I had a hard time catching up.  Luckily the place is big and clean. We let William had lunch here because it was about 12pm.    After his lunch, we continued our little road trip.   After drinking his milk, he felt asleep very easily.

There was no traffic at all so by the time we got to Bishop it was about 4 PM.  Still a little bit early so we decided to check out the autumn leaves at the Rock Creek Canyon.  It was passed peak but there were still few places the leaves were still good with beautiful yellow color.  It was so windy though; so we took only a few pictures then continued our way to Mammoth Lakes which is about 40 minute more driving.

When we got to the hotel, the wind was stronger and it was so cold.  Looked like the rain had just stopped because the road were all wet.  Check-in was easy; we got the room in a different building than the main building which is in the back.   We had a little trouble with opening the parking garage gate.  Put in the room key but the door would not open.  I called the hotel for help, they said they’d come down but lucky for us someone was on their way out of the garage so the gate opened. So we sneaked in :).

The room was nice with a beautiful view of the mountain.  William loved the new place: he ran around touching this & that.  After a long driving trip I thought he would be tired but obviously he was not.