Following the surreal experience at the Bonneville Salt Flats and the long long drive, Nevada City was to be our home for the next week. It is not in Nevada, nor is it a City. In the British sense of the word anyway. More of a quaint village with narrow winding streets and skinny footpaths. In California, not Nevada. Not even Nevada County, California.

This was officially our laziest week of the whole trip, activity-wise anyway. As Baz Lurhman once said “Live in Northern California once but leave before it makes you… soft”. That one hour time difference was a killer. Not only does this mean my work start time was brought forward to 8am, but also the end of Summer is approaching, and the sun isn’t getting up so early any more either. Or maybe we’re just soft.

What we did instead was to make good use of the slightly longer evenings in our Inn Town campsite (not really what you’d call ‘in town’ but I guess we’re over that now). Well, we drank more and barbecued more 😋, we marveled at the tall trees, and we played leisurely games of Cornhole and Yahtzee (yes I pretty much got my ass whupped every time).

I particularly liked the Sierra Commons co-working space in Nevada City, for its shaded outdoor patios, front and back. So nice to be able to work outside all day, and ironically the smoke had pretty much cleared up by the time we got to California.

The drive south from Nevada City took us past Lake Tahoe, where Darren let his paddle board out to play again (it’s not seen the light of day in so long, it must think it’s been in the naughty corner. Oh no, that’s my bike!)

And then just like that, we were in our final week. 11 weeks down, 1 to go, how did that happen? What better way to close out in style than a week in Mammoth Lakes on the eastern side of the Sierras. Mammoth is our normal California backyard go-to hangout when we need to exchange the heat of Santa Clarita for the refreshing mountain air. Likewise, it was the perfect last destination stop-off for hiking, biking, and drinking beer before going home.

Mammoth is to the outdoors what Vegas is to partygoers. It builds the sense of excitement as you approach. “The mountains are calling.” So says John Muir (the Scottish-American naturalist largely responsible for establishing nearby Yosemite National Park), the slogan almost as enticing as the recent Covid-induced “Your adventure has waited long enough”. I literally cannot think of this phrase in any other way than as a movie trailer voiceover: slow, deep and dramatic. “Your adventure has waited long enough”.

To be fair, this was less adrenaline-fueled type adventure, more of the get out of bed at sunrise to fit a walk in before work type of adventure. Yes, the six mile hikes before work on Mountain Time were long gone, we’d be lucky to fit in two miles on Pacific Time here. Still, we did what we could.

Given the Covid challenges in California, the co-working space in Mammoth had opted to not open for the entire summer season, boo. Leaving us with no other realistic option than an AirBnB. I was super impressed with Darren’s choice, a cute ‘Tree House’ cabin centrally located and just minutes from Mammoth Brewing.

Which brings me on to the very important topic of Mammoth Brewing. It’s come a long way from its early days, when we remember it as a small backyard operation focused on solid quality beers with some interesting seasonals. I’d go as far as saying it was our original inspiration for seeking out new and interesting breweries.

Fast forward nearly ten years and now it’s a big operation with canning and bottling exports stretching throughout California and since 2014, they’ve had a very prominent tasting room smack bang in the middle of Mammoth. If you ask me they’re no longer pushing the boundaries, although the beers are still excellent. With California Covid restrictions and our intolerance to queueing, it took us three days to get in. But when we finally did, it felt like coming home! Welcome to Altitude!!! 🙂

But it’s not all about the beer. Sometimes you just need a bit of purple in your life.

With Labor Day and a long weekend approaching, a day off on Friday gave us both an opportunity to experience that little bit more of Mammoth.

Come the weekend, we’d moved on from the AirBnB and we were taking it easy. There we were, chilling out by the river, skulking in the shade of the trees having forgotten to bring the sunscreen, and oblivious to any advancing clouds. And then this happened.

We were in no immediate danger from the Creek Fire but it was close enough to not want to hang around. And so a day early, we hitched up, braved the fog from the fire and turned our attention to home. Our thoughts go out to the brave firefighters that can’t just get the hell out like us.

And there’s no getting the hell away from the smoke. We barely managed to beat it back home, giving us a day of clear air (pool party, woohoo!) before being engulfed once again. Over a week on and the view on our home turf sunrise walk was still a dense red fireball sun obscured, almost eclipsed by smoke particles. Couple that with the heat (118F/ 48C on our first day back!! Calmed down since then but there’s no sign of autumn here just yet) and we’re about ready to head off again.

The only question is where…

A few hundred miles down the road from smoky Idaho, we found ourselves in smoky Utah, at the Bonneville salt flats. What with an intense 750+ mile driving weekend, our spare time was limited. But we were able to experience both sunset and sunrise at the salt flats. The opaque blandness of the sky from the fires only intensified the surreal experience.

Sunset was not much more than a few initial jaw drops at the scenery and a few practice flights with the drone, before settling in to camp overnight.

Swiftly go the nights (when there’s no mice around to keep you awake). Before we knew it, we were approaching sunrise and I was chomping at the bit to get out there and RUN. Into the nothingness, as far as you could see.

The salt flats underfoot are hard yet responsive, and well… flat. Such a great surface to traverse. Other people take their supercars to push their vehicle to its limits, testing its top speed and their own nerve. They embody their inner sense of youth, joyfully pulling donuts over and over as if in a computer simulated alternative reality. Me? I wasn’t planning on any speed records, I just wanted to experience the freedom of running into infinity. Which is exactly what it felt like.

If you asked me to define Ketchum in one of those Balderdash word games, I’d go with “an old tribal Indian greeting, spoken in a low, hushed tone, and accompanied by a deferential nod of the head: Ketchum”. Darren’s offering: “a new tasty recipe for ketchup, pronounced ketchyum”. Turns out it was neither of these things. Ketchum is actually a ski resort in southern Idaho and our next destination after Butte.

It was in stark contrast to our Saturday en-route stop at Craters of the Moon National Monument. And what is a national monument anyway? The feds say it’s not good enough to be a national park and the state doesn’t claim it? The only problem I have is that when you think of a monument, you think of a building or some kind of man made structure. Whereas this was a designated protected wilderness. Whatever. Craters of the Moon made for an awesome (if very hot and very dry!) hike, with some cool drone footage.

Back to Ketchum. Quite refreshing to be back in a compact (albeit out-of-season) tourist town after Butte. But actually the best thing was that just a few miles out of town, there was a gorgeous valley with awesome boondocking. Free camping for the week with a truly remote feel, and yet just a 15 minute commute to KetchumWorks, the co-working office. A cool converted bank building, with the main conference room housed in the original bank vault.

When you’re out in the countryside, it’s only right to accept you’re a part of nature. That the environment you’re in was there long before you, and will still be there long after you leave. And then, in this peaceful natural environment, you start to hear a rustling in the BaseCamp. So faint you even wonder if you imagined it. You doze back off to sleep…

Fast forward to the next day and there was no longer any doubt in our minds. We had a visitor. A field mouse. But not in the field, in our BaseCamp. Ding ding ding, round one: Hamiltons vs The Mouse. We diligently set out the two humane mousetraps before heading off for work, baited with Nutella. That evening: nothing. Mouse droppings, confirming our suspicions, but no mouse.

Ding ding ding, round two. Up the baiting game with pretzel M&Ms. (I was quite proud of my idea. I mean who can resist those! If you haven’t come across them before, they’re about the same size and shape as a maltezer but with a smartie-like coating). We retired to bed. It wasn’t long before I started to have doubts as to whether pretzel M&Ms were really the ideal baiting solution. They attracted our furry friend for sure. But with his first attempts, he accidentally locked the M&M inside the trap and himself outside. Gave Darren a beseeching look. “Let me in. I can’t get at the good stuff.”

After that, he developed a canny way of extracting said pretzel M&M from the trap, still without him getting inside the trap. He careered around the floor chasing it. Then upped his game to play soccer with it. It was maybe at this point he decided it would be more fun to invite some friends.

Ding ding ding, round three. After two sleepless nights, we were starting to become more concerned for our wellbeing than that of the mouse. Or mice. Bring on the big guns: the proper mouse traps. Ones that the mouse runs onto, gets stuck and can’t run off. We still put the humane traps out so if they played the mousetrap lottery wisely, they’d be good. Other mouse deterrents from my research included Irish Spring soap and tumble dryer sheets. We strategically littered the smellies (in the hope the mice would just leave us in peace – fat chance) and the traps (sorry, not sorry) around the BaseCamp.

What a long night it turned out to be. It started with the scurrying, scampering, and scuffling. Then a faint scraping sound as they danced around the traps. Followed by a bit of M&M football (wait what, had I not learned my lesson?). I was actually relieved when one of them was finally able to make some inroads into an M&M, so it was no longer spherical. More to the point, it was now able to fit under a small gap, lost unto mouse obscurity forever.

I may have forgotten to mention that the mouse hotel and freeway were under my side of the bed. So on top of all the mouse activity, those damn smelly soap bars were using their repellent superpowers on me. In between bouts of trying to sleep, my eyes were streaming and my nose was running. Ever been in a car with a newly opened overpowering air freshener that leaves you gasping for breath? …That!

I could go on. But long story short, FIVE mice. In a night. In a small trailer that comfortably fits two people. Come the morning, we were five mice lighter. Our persistence had paid off. We were exhausted but officially mouse-free. (Don’t count your chickens and all that but for now at least, fingers crossed!).

So I realized my blog and my photos for the week don’t really line up. It’s difficult to capture mouse action on camera. So instead, here’s what we DO have photos of.

We made the most of our camping spot with some nice early morning hikes and runs, and warm evenings with BBQs and campfires.

We book-ended our week in Ketchum with some local hikes around Sun Valley and Hailey, Idaho. The first one involved a decent climb of 3,500ft up Bald Mountain for great views of the valley below.

Throughout the week, the air got more and more dense, as the smoky air from the California wildfires made its way across to Idaho. By the end of the week for our walk up Carbonate Mountain, Hailey, well you can see the difference for yourself.

It’s difficult to know how to describe Butte, Montana, other than ‘a bit weird’. The population has gone down from around 100,000 in its heyday to currently 30,000. And it shows. Even at rush hour (actually there was no rush hour), the roads were quieter than Santa Clarita during lockdown. Think zombie apocalypse without the zombies.

Let’s face it, unlike most other places we’ve been, Butte is not a destination in itself. The area has a rich, diverse mining history, indeed it was once known as the richest hill on earth. Since then, other mining areas went on to steal that crown and by the 1980s, mining had largely come to a halt. But boy, does Butte still play the mining card, not yet ready to depart from its roots. And why not.

Just walking around, we saw the Mine bank building, the Miners hotel, Metals bank, Metals Sports Bar, Quarry Brewing and Copper City Casino. And there are mines or remnants of mines everywhere. I even saw what looked like an outdoor wedding ceremony or the post-wedding photo shoot positioned right under one of the mine structures.

Another unique aspect is that uptown historic Butte does not have your average high street. Maybe somewhere there’s a downtown Butte, hip and kicking, and we just never found it. The Butte we did encounter was a bit light on bars and restaurants, big name fashion stores and well, just ‘normal’ shops. Instead there was a Senior Center, a Community Counseling Center, an Affordable Housing Network, an Imagine Butte Resource Center and a Chemical Dependency Center. Starting to get the picture?

Shop-wise, there was an abundance of ‘lightly used’ clothing stores, not to mention a pawn shop, a tin shop (where else can you find a tin shop?), and a taxidermy (I kid you not).

Despite the ghost town feel of the place, it had some really awesome buildings. It nostalgically reminded me of an industrial northern town in England. A lot of red brick, with outer walls bearing huge painted signs and faded advertisements. It’s just so begging to be renovated.

Surrounding the town itself, there are mountains. Granted not Frisco in terms of scenic beauty but still picturesque. Point being, this town could be really great again. It would just take something other than mining to generate investment and attract people to live here again. Maybe I’m one step closer to understanding why Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign took such hold.

At the co-working space itself, we had a whole spacious, airy conference room to ourselves. Actually, let’s face it, we had the whole place to ourselves. Is it still valid to call it a co-working office if we’re the only people there? Other than walking through what felt like the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to get to our office (literally a Mr Ben style clothes shop with random racks of used clothes angled like an obstacle course), the workspace served us well. Of course, it was decked out with all the mining history memorabilia you could ever want.

Once we could see past all this, we actually had a really cool week here :-). There was the morning walk on the old railway line. What better excuse for Darren to get the drone out. Albeit a six miler put us under pressure to make it to work on time, had to seriously pick up the pace.

And slap bang in the middle of Butte is the M trail up Big Butte. Great views of the expanse of the town from the air.

We also paid a visit to the two breweries in town (the third was boarded up and out of business sadly). After the deserted streets and tumbleweed, we finally found where all the people were – at the breweries! Even with COVID, people will find a way to socialize in small bubbles and drink good beer outdoors. Cheers Butte!