Bishop Area, Highway 168, CA, USA – Oct. 7-9, 2011

(More pictures available, RMC on the posting title and opt to open in a new window.)

It seems every other day I say, “What a perfect day”, and this trip had the best day of all:  Our 11^th Anniversary!

Trying out our European Approach (leaving Salt at the last pitch and taking Pepper out to investigate where the next pitch might be) Alan dropped me at Starbucks in Bishop and headed out Highway 168 to some of the most gorgeous scenery to date.  

A side note here, I have a consulting gig going on which is determining how long we can go without a strong internet connection.  We had stopped at the Highlands RV Park in Bishop for two nights because it claimed to have WIFI, which it did, but it was so slow as to be useless.  So I spent many hours at the local Starbucks preparing for my upcoming SAP demo while Alan played house husband, doing laundry, cooking and the aforementioned scouting trip.

Alan found us a great spot at Brittlebush Campground (NFS), a new campground not on a lot of maps yet (indeed, not on the National Forest website yet), with a nice, level, gravel pitch and a creek running behind the grounds.  It proved to be a great jumping off point for our daily excursions to higher elevations.  We would come out of the higher mountains in the early dusk (which starts very early up there with all the tall peaks) and drive down into our sun-filled spot:  Perfection!  We stayed all three nights in Brittlebush.

Each day we drove up to do some fishing.  Lake Sabrina (pronounced with a long “I” otherwise they “know you are aren’t from around here” – although I am betting there are other clues) was busy on Saturday with tons of people taking photographs and more than a few fishermen.  We drove back down the highway toward home, stopping twice to fish, each time Alan caught a good size trout, although I still held the record at 12.5”.

The road was still too snowy to attempt North Lake, so on Sunday, our Anniversary, we headed to South Lake which stars in most of the pictures in this link.  On the way, we stopped at a fishing spot that normally has a lot of pickups parked in it but that morning happened to be empty.  So we called, “carpe-fish ‘em”, hopped out and Alan promptly beat my record by landing a 13” trout!  I broke my dry-spell with an 11”’er and, since it was nearing lunch (yes, two fish before lunch!), we headed back up the road to South Lake. 

We had our anniversary picnic on the shore before heading up for a short hike.  The hike was lovely:  At over 10,000 feet our lungs were getting a serious work-out, the dogs were running wild and, best of all,  Alan’s knee held up beautifully.

On the way back, we stopped just south of the first fishing hole and Alan brought in another three fish, although one was small so we made sure he recovered before sending him back into the creek.  There were some monster fish in there, but they weren’t having anything to do with anything on my line.

In the photo array is a picture of our anniversary dinner – four fish (Alan asked what we were going to do with the “other two” and I said, “you mean we have six fish?!?”)  It was a fish fest with delicious Kuri squash cooked on the open flame.  S’mores for dessert.

We are headed to Mammoth Lakes next, one night in an RV park to get Salt cleaned up and then two nights at the Westin for my SAP demo.  Who knows where after that?  Just more Perfect Days, I imagine.

-K

PS:  I admit, I am looking forward to the Westin:  All those fresh towels!  Bathrobes! Room Service Breakfast!  It is in our budget to have one hotel night per week, which so far has not been required.  We’ve been out six weeks and these two nights will be number 2 and 3 in a hotel—the first, if you’ll recall, was the motel in Santa Barbara during Pepper’s breakdown.