I did what I could to continue with shoulder physical therapy using tubing, the pulley rope, and the exercise equipment in the hotel's "fitness center". They had a multi-station exercise machine that included a leg attachment for leg extensions and curls. My old weight rack and bench setup had one, but because I was relying on deadlifts, manual glute-ham raises, and squats for leg work, the new bench doesn't have a leg attachment. For this surgical recovery and the potential next one, this is a problem because I can't hold a barbell or heavy dumbbell to do leg work. The old-time strongmen used "iron boots" that were strap-on "boots" that could include a dumbbell each before the days of isolation leg work. The tubing is awkward to use for leg work, I ordered a pair of those boots. The boots should be useful for a long while. I will need to build up a lot of strength before I move beyond them, but I can see that using them for leg curls may be I'll continue with anyway.
The landscape where we were in Nevada was sage desert and hills. Dry and sandy in some parts, but where we were working had springs and different types of associated biting flies, but the air was dry.
I didn't bring a camera, but took some pictures with my phone on the way back. On the way I bought a few postcards. The following pictures are from the phone.
Once we came across the California border, we entered the Mammoth Lakes area, where we stopped for the night.
As we approached the Sierra Nevada mountains, we were in a meadow.
Once in the village of Mammoth Lakes, we found that the road to the Devils Postpile was closed, so we stopped on the road there and looked out over the valley from the embankment. While we were wandering around there, a few of us went over to a snow pile and made a snowball each and carried them back. When we arrived back with the others, we put them on the railing. Another guy had some carrots and another had a pocket knife, so I fashioned a face with a couple pebbles and carrot slivers.
On the other side of the railing, there was a rock wall with a chipmunk wandering around. "Don't feed the wildlife", but someone gave it a peanut.
I thought it was strange that the place name didn't have an apostrophe, so I looked it up. Official place names in the US aren't allowed to have apostrophes in them, so there are only a few exceptions and Devils Postpile isn't one. I don't have a picture of it, but it's like Devils Tower, a magma pile that cooled slowly and fractured vertically to make rock "posts".
The next morning we continued the drive across California, passing through Yosemite national forest. One place we stopped for picture taking was Tenaya Lake.
Another place we stopped was at an overlook toward Half Dome. Most of the rock there is granite. In the foreground are mounded granite slabs. Half Dome is a granite mountain that has a shear rise in Yosemite valley, which was to the south of the road/pass we were on. We didn't detour down there.
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