2010.05.07 -- Lake Del Valle

A camping trip to Lake Del Valle, California.

The last time my Parents came to visit we looked for a place to camp that was not too far away and had some water. Lake Del Valle is only about an hour away, and has a very nice campground and lovely lake.

We stayed for a couple nights and rented a house boat for one day. We got skunked on catching fish but everyone had a grand time anyway.

Here is Robert at the helm.

And here is Robert trying his luck fishing. Even with my Dad being steeped in fishing success for damn near 70 years, we didnt get so much as a bite all day.

The lake itself was very nice, only lacking a clean sand beach to be worth driving to much more often.

Erick and Katerina (below) also tried diligently. It looked like people lost interest with a rapidity that was pretty much inversely proportional to age.

It was much more interesting for the younger folks to drive the boat than to try to catch fish. I guess this reminds me of my youth, but we were around boats so much that we hardly ever got so very excited about opening up the throttle as much as this younger generation did.

Later on there is a zoom on this same expression. It is worth repeating.

Nana got chaperone duties for Katerina, and I think she even managed to put a worm on her hook, although she wont do it for herself.

Here is capn Robert.

And capn Erick.

And mom with the boys.

After the youngest ones got totally fed up with fishing, err, "not catching", we dropped them off and Dad and I tried some more while the rest of the crew went to the beach.

This was taken right after Dad and I called it quits.

Here is Grandad demonstrating the proper style. A true master of boating.

All this one seemed to care about was the throttle.

And here is the zoom on that devilish expression.

Final group shot on the boat before heading back to the campsite.

There are preparations to try out a new style for baking at the campsite. You may recall from the Acorn Camp trip (see link at the very top) Mom baked a cobbler in thhttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=912431127682594831&postID=115245164433895133e dutch oven. We had some problems with the heat that time, and decided to try the fish smoker as an oven instead. The fish smoker is a stainless steel box with a sliding cover. You can see it to the left of Erick on the picnic table.

Here is the cobbler in the oven, and it worked great as a camp oven. Tasty! Great job Kay.

On the next day we went for a nice hike in the hills around the lake. I can tell you that you would not want to do that hike much later in the season, but at the time we went it was very nice.

Here is the initial ascent.

Most of the climbing is over at this point, but there was a little bit of up and down.

We had chicken salad sandwiches and potato salad on the trail at a spot that was not particularly great spatially but happened to be 12:00 pm temporally.

Grandad and Katerina in the shade.

After a few more ups and downs we came to the California Bushwhack part of the hike. Also known as: "we are not lost, we just dont know precisely where the trail is". I believe that I have a particular knack for this, and we managed to find a spectacular goat path, with only one very minor backtrack.

Here is a nice shot of the goat path. This is most definitely not one of the official trails; but it very nicely followed along the ridge and eventually plummeted back down to the main trails.

There was some guff from the peanut gallery about the bovine livestock, but we were a large enough group that the herd eventually gave way. I will admit that as the guy in the lead, the alpha bull got me just a little bit nervous before he decided to split.

The goat path went through a lovely forested zone before the steep plummet back to the main trail. I really enjoyed this part.

And here we are back at the foot of the lake with a simple hike along the shore back to the cars.

Everyone enjoyed the trip and Lake Del Valle is definitely on our list for a place to return to.

Full size photos can be found here. http://picasaweb.google.com/jkwashbourne/20100507LakeDelValle#