This might be two out of three entries for Rock Creek. As previously reported in "Rock Creek, Tom's Place . . . ", we actually Drove Backward to reach this recommendation from Dave & Lisa and haven’t been able to make ourselves leave yet!
We did manage to move to the full hook-up site, #86, at French Camp (NFS), although no tactics were necessary (not that we have any.) We walked over the morning of the 19th and met the charming tenant. Living in Florida, she has traveled out to California every year for 20 years—sometimes twice a year. Clearly a dog lover, she had a nice talk with River about the difficulty of being Irish. She also gave us a recommendation for Florida: St. Joseph’s State Park, so we’ll be adding that into our itinerary. Turns out, she was expecting us (the camp host mentioned that we would like to move in) and she was heading out that day.
Although nirvana awaited us at #86, we were sad to leave site #25: A delightful site in its own right--maybe my favorite so far. It just didn't have any hook-ups and, as we can only dry camp for four nights at a time, we were in need of a cleaning out if you get my drift. And wow, unlimited water is such a luxury! There is nothing like a nice hot shower after a long day of hiking and fishing, even if you have to hold the shower nozzle yourself.
On the 20th, I set some bread to rising and we set off up Little Lakes Basin hoping to find the camera (that I am sure now) River took off into the woods. But it was nowhere to be found. A delightful hike none-the-less, and we added some distance making it past Heart Lake to Box Lake. We saw the most enormous fish swimming by but couldn’t get them to bite anything. (I guess that’s how they got to be so big.) Alan caught one little Brookie, who sadly, didn’t survive the hook removal.
After a great hike (there is a movie coming – A Day in the Life: Rock Creek Hike, I will post it on the Movie tab next week!) we stopped on the way back down the valley at (what is now referred to as) Alan’s Lucky Fishing Hole. He promptly pulled out two “good sized” (over 11”—six months ago we would have labeled those "whoppers") trout for our dinner. Thankfully, my bread came out delicious even after seven hours of a second rising, so dinner was fire roasted trout and yams, fresh baked Flax Seed bread and a bottle of Malbec.
No wonder we can’t bring ourselves to leave.
Tomorrow, Saturday the 22nd, we are going to head up to Mono Pass and just see how high we can get. We met a couple coming out yesterday who had just done it so they are my inspiration. If Alan’s knee and my lungs can make it, we’ll be looking over all of Little Lakes Basin from over 12,000 feet! You can bet there will be more pictures.
-K
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