This weekend was a lot of fun. Rece and I joined Christine and Sam for a camping trip up to Lake Isabella. The plan was to camp out (in tents) for a couple of nights over Memorial Day weekend.
Day 1 - Saturday, May 27th
Prior commitments prevented us from leaving until around noon-ish on Saturday. This was fine, as the traffic proved to be fairly light - especially for a holiday weekend.
We had initially planned to borrow Christine's friend's new Ford Escape (an SUV), but interestingly enough my older Ford Taurus wagon (with 98,000+ miles) ended up having more storage space for our gear. We scrapped the idea of taking the Escape and instead opted for my wagon. I was a tad bit worried that this higher-mileage vehicle might give us problems on the trip, but it proved to be just fine for the job in the end.
Of course I brought my GPS receiver and pre-planned some geocaches to find along the way. I strategically chose a few going over 'The Grapevine' (as they call it) to provide a stretch for the legs and to keep the pre-teens from revolting out of boredom. The first cache attempt wasn't much of an attempt at all. I led us up an access road to some powerline towers that turned out to be nowhere near the cache. We had to go back to the car - and still couldn't figure out where to park in order to get to it. We simply gave up on it and continued along our way.
The second cache we went after turned out to be an interesting one. It was well hidden, but it was the fact that it was extremely windy (we got sand-blasted!) and there was a hot dog vendor in what seemed like nowhere that made it so interesting. So this hot dog cart guy was there, waiting for customers in the middle of nowhere, just watching us as we attempted to find this cache. As luck would have it, he got a customer just as Sam found it. I wonder how much business this guy gets here, since the prior log in the cache also mentioned the vendor in it - and that was from a week prior... odd.
After our caching break, we pushed on down 'The Grapevine' and on (then through) Bakersfield toward the hills. The drive along the Kern river was nice. It was a small 2-lane highway with fantastic views of the river and its rapids - sometimes it's a bummer being the driver and not being able to take as much in.
The 2-lane highway opened up to 4 lanes towards the top and we discovered that it wasn't as rural as we had expected. (they had a Vons supermarket!) The area was beautiful and the lake was so blue! A little further driving (past the Vons) brought us to our campsite. It was bustling with activity, as many people obviously had the same idea to camp over the weekend.
We both (us boys and them girls) had new tents, which meant a bit of a learning curve for both parties to set up. With just a little fiddling we both got set up and then went on to cook our dinner of burgers, fresh veggies, and baked beans - OK, maybe it isn't such a good idea to have beans when you plan on sleeping in a tent later that night. This first night we had to endure some pretty rude behavior from neighboring campers - one group that blasted rap music until around 11 pm and the other that carried on loud (and drunken) conversation until at least 2 am (the last I checked my watch before managing to fall asleep).
Day 2 - Sunday, May 28th
On the morning of day 2 (Sunday) I woke up tired and a bit stiff in the joints... but since I was out camping, my mood was still happy. Christine and I went about getting the important morning stuff done (coffee) and then cooked a breakfast of sausage, eggs, toast, fruit, and potatoes - oh wait, forgot the potatoes... and the butter... and the sweetener for the coffee. Fine, off to Vons we go! Oh look, there's a coffee place... and a donut place... we'll keep that in mind in case we get lazy (which we never ended up doing, by the way). OK, so yeah, 3.5 hours later we finished eating breakfast... hmm... should we start making lunch now? Naw, let's go geocaching and check out the area.
We discovered that there was a general store not 1/2 a mile up the road from the campgrounds, which was much closer than the 6 miles to Vons, while driving to our first cache. Yep, 3 crosses on a hill... oh wait, this is a multi-cache... and we're in the wrong area to start... and Sam strained her ankle while climbing some rocks... gah! We gave up on this cache and went after another one nearby. It had a great view of the lake and we encountered a group of people at the cache location who turned out to be the people who originally hid it. We spent a little time talking with them and enjoying the beautiful day before moving on to explore.
After finding just one more cache deciding against going after a couple of others, we turned our attention to checking out downtown Kernville. This is a very cool little town, with all sorts of shops (most of which you'd expect in a tourist area) and a quaint town square. There was even a petshop that sold ice cream... anyhow... We decided to check out the museum, which turned out to be one of the most interesting and fascinating museums I've ever been to. If you ever find yourself near Kernville, this is a must see! (free to enter - but donations are welcome)
We went back to camp after our day out and made what Sam called 'Hobo Stew' which was simply a bunch of veggies and stew beef thrown in a foil pouch (that we made the night before we left) and placed over the campfire on the grill. We left them on for about an hour and spent the time drinking quite a bit and talking/laughing with some of our camp neighbors. The stew was delicious and I don't think any of us were able to actually finish them completely. Christine had quite a bit more than I did to drink that night and we spent the evening relaxing by the fire and laughing quite a bit. Eventually we all went to bed and settled in for a good night's sleep. The rude neighbors didn't make a peep this night and I was able to get in an amazing 9 hours of sleep!
Day 3 - Monday, May 29th
Christine awoke rather early and a bit hung over on Monday morning. She immediately set out upon the task of making coffee and, ultimately, breakfast. Shortly before 9, Rece woke me up and I was delighted to find that I felt well-rested and not a bit sore as I had been the morning before. As I was putting on my shoes I got a good chuckle out of one of the other neighbor's method of waking his camp-mates. He had started playing the guitar with lyrics that went something along the lines of...
"It's time to wake up, so get up you fuckers...
It's time to wake up, so get up you fuckers...
Wake the fuck up you sleepy fuckers..."
The singer's voice and humor reminded me of my brother Danny a lot, as this is something he would have likely done in the same situation.
Breakfast burritos, fruit, coffee were on the menu for breakfast and it was very yummy! After eating we packed up our gear and were happy to find that we had a lot more room in the car now that we had used up most of our provisions. With a bunch of bungie cords and a cargo net, we securely strapped the tents and chairs on the roof rack of the car (something I needlessly worried about breaking free on the way up here as well). We broke camp at noon, right on schedule.
The trip back down the mountain was pleasant, with the view of the river and rapids and mountainous cliffs. At the base we stopped to admire a man-made waterfall that roared out of a hole in the side of the mountain. We then continued our journey back, stopping at the Flying-J truck stop for a bite to eat. The rest of the journey home was sedate, as we were all rather beat from camping.
After getting back to my place and unpacking, we ordered a pizza and then proceded to buzz off all of Rece's hair. He wanted it done and we finally had the time to do it. Christine took pictures of the process, which I'll post later today or tomorrow (along with the camping pictures).
This was a very fun trip to an area of California I've never been to before. The Sequoia National Forest is a beautiful place - even though the area we were camping wasn't much of a forest. My only real complaint is that the restrooms were disgusting and there simply weren't enough facilities to support a full campground. I even opted against taking a shower the entire trip because of this (one more day and I'd have started to smell pretty bad, I'm sure). Aside from that, everything was great.
I'll be posting pictures of all this in the next day or so. I'll make a post with a link to the web page when I'm done.
This entry didn't want to go back to work today.
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