Thursday, May 21, 2009

It's that time of year

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I always look forward to my camping trips this time of year. I've been limited to car camping for quite some time, but here I am all packed up for my second backpacking trip of the season. This one is much more mellow, just a quick over night'r up to a small alpine lake called Penner Lake. Sounds like there is still quite a bit of snow up there, and the road in to the trail-head is still closed. The ranger seemed to think I can get at least half way down the last 2 and a half mile dirt road turnoff, so I'm figuring I'll leave my truck somewhere along there and hike in.



I haven't been up in that area in over ten years, so I'm looking forward to getting back there and hoping with the road closed I'll have most of it to myself.

BTW, the picture on the top is from last weekend. The family and I stayed at a little campground on Folsom lake called Beals point with some other families from my wife's girlscout troop. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it with the forecast of a 100 degree day and my vision of Folsom not being the prettiest of places to camp, but surprisingly it was actually pretty nice. We had lots of shade, it wasn't nearly as hot as I thought it would be, and the water level at folsom is really high right now so we even took a little dip in the lake. The kids had a ball running around and playing on my old hammock. Just goes to show, even if it's only 20 minutes from your house, camping out for the night always beats staying home.

Next up for family camping is our yearly trip to Yosemite in two weeks.

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