I’m not sure if this should actually go in the #screens-aars thread or not, but …
Just about every year, the EinsteinEP extended family (father, brothers, sister, nephews, cousins, close friends, etc.) spends Memorial Day weekend up at Lake Davis, CA for fishing, boating, feeding the local mosquitoes, and creating long-lived memories. Like of that one time we all got completely decimated by mosquitoes. Ah, memories.
The man-made lake is typically well-stocked with hungry trout although the illegal introduction of the Northern Pike in the early/mid 90s pretty much destroyed fishing there for a good fifteen years. Active efforts to remove the pike, including poisoning the lake, were eventually successful, however, and fishing has been good for the last few family trips.
Here Grandpa shows my nephew one of his hauls from a trip in 2013.
Although there is a “resort” at the lake (e.g., a partly-finished poorly thought-out hotel with odd-sized rooms, a dirt parking lot, and one “suite” that has a hot-tub crammed into a room that is only a few inches larger than the hot-tub itself), we typically camp in one of the sites’ first-come-first-serve campgrounds. There are also cabins for rent in the area, for those that would rather not do the tent thing but, for us crazies, tent camping is a large part of the experience.
This particular site has been a regular spot for us. I’m hoping we pick it up again this year.
Road Trip
The trick for me is the travel. For the rest of my family, Lake Davis is a 3 or 4 hour drive. For me, it’s a 15 hour ordeal of trying to stay both awake and sane while driving across some of the flattest and most barren parts of Nevada. There are some real gems of scenery along the way - I do enjoy the stark chiseled look of Nevada mountains - but trying to set up your tent for the night after being wasted from driving all day is just an awful way to start a camping trip.
Oh look, more…flat…spots…zzzzzzzzzzz
To combat this, I’m going for the “get-there-fast-come-home-slow” route.
I’ll be trucking out of here at o’early’thirty on Thursday, 5/26, and hope to make it all the way to Tonopah, NV. A little overnight rejuvenation then I’ll be at Lake Davis after just a 4 hour drive: plenty of time to stake out a good campground, go get some refreshments at the local general store, then set up our camp site with plenty of time before dark.
Lake Davis’ Grizzly Store has just about everything you could possibly want. Except wifi - there is no wifi. But there shouldn’t be any wifi when camping.
Connectivity in this part of the Sierra Nevadas is practically nil, so any updates I make will be either from the trip there and back, or afterwards when I’ve had a chance to filter through all the pics and videos.
#The Return
Since everyone else on the trip lives a skip and a hop away, they’re usually out of there Monday afternoon, so they can clock in to work on Tuesday. Since I’ve got a two-day drive ahead of me anyways, I’d rather get a better travel-time-to-fun-time ratio so I always try to make a scenic return. Here’s my plan this year (subject to change):
I’ve still got to work out the details, but the area around Bishop, CA is simply gorgeous. I’m worried the area will be just chock full of tourists this time of year, which I’m not looking forward to. I recognize this is kind of hypocritical, being a tourist and all, but it’s not that I mind the tourists: I just hate it when the narrow winding Sierra Nevada mountain town streets are so backed up with rubbernecking Californian BMWs, H3s, Audis, and Escalades that it takes 20 minutes to go through a single intersection. Hotels are usually overbooked (learning that you don’t have a room, despite having a “reservation”, is a frustrating experience, especially at 11pm at night with a tired toddler), and restaurants have an awful time keeping up with the surge in demand.
Anyways, I hope to have some new stories and pics to share with you guys this year!
