Laura and Lee's September Saunter
September 6-9, 2001
September...time to celebrate Laura and Walt's birthdays in the mountains again! And yes, we do go the same places year after year...but it's *tradition* after all - and what's wrong with that?
This year we added another traveler to our merry band - Walt and Barb's Portugese Water Dog Kona, Empress of Portagees, aka the PWD (pronounced "pwid").
She'd never been to the Eastern Sierra before, but she was an excellent traveler and seemed to enjoy herself - except when she got too hot. :-) But more about that later.
Thursday, September 6 - Travel Day, Fossil Falls
This time on the way up, we stopped at a place called
"Fossil Falls". This is the site of some volcanic
activity - there's a large cinder cone nearby, lots
of lava laying around, and then a cliff of what looks
like obsidian - remiscent of a waterfall, hence the
name.
It was pretty warm there, and we saw this very colorful
lizard sunning himself on a rock. He let us get pretty
close to him.
Speaking of colorful, the lichen that was on some of
the lava rocks was also very colorful - and there was
a lot of it.
After Fossil Falls we made our usual stops in Bishop for
gas and bread and groceries before heading up to my
parents' house.
Friday, September 7 - Rock Creek
After breakfast the four of us, plus Dad and Kona, headed
up the road to Rock Creek to do one of our favorite day
hikes in Little Lakes Valley. It's one of the prettiest valleys
I've ever been to, and so accessible! You can get a great
view of a lake and the mountains with less than a half mile hike
up the trail. Of course it's popular enough that you often end
up parking your car in the overflow lot that's another 1/2
mile down the road, but that's another story...Since it was
after Labor Day, we hoped there would be fewer people around.
We walked about 2 1/2 miles up the trail to Chickenfoot
Lake which, guess what?, is shaped like a chicken foot!
We settled down in the grass around the lake to eat lunch,
soak up the sun, and even nap a little.
We went back via a cross-country route which was a little
steep in places, but eventually we hit the main trail and
made it back to the trail head again.
Lee had fun taking water photos - though he had to get down and
dirty for some of them! :-)
It was late in the season and it had been a dry year, so there weren't too many wildflowers around, much to my disappointment, but earlier in the season the trail passes by meadows that are full of flowers. I still managed to find a few of them, though. :-)
Saturday, September 8
Hmmm...after a wonderful breakfast of Egyptian Waffles (just
like mummy used to make), we headed up to Convict Lake. I
think I've told the story before - that it was so named because
some escaped convicts were captured there in the late 1800s.
We had a good time wandering all the way around the lake. It was a pretty warm day, though, and while we were walking on the west side, which is sand and sagebrush and exposed with very few trees, it was getting *quite* toasty. At one point we finally came across a tree whose shadow provided some shade, and Kona immediately flopped down in the shade and refused to move for several minutes. :-) In that gray/black coat she was pretty hot! She certainly knows how to make her wishes known. :-)
The rest of it I'll just tell with pictures... :-)
Lee, Walt, Barb, and Kona on the east (somewhat cooler) side of the lake.
There's a
"boardwalk" across the marshy/muddy part at the lake's inlet at the southern
end. It looked kind of cool in the trees.
What are all these people looking at? :-)
Ahhh...it's a large bird! We think it was a golden eagle,
eating his/her kill at the top of this dead tree.
We took some "family photos"...here's Lee and me...
...and Walt, Barb, and Kona.
This is what the trail on the west side of the lake looked like - you
can see why Kona would have found the shade of a tree inviting -
they were rather few and far between!
But even though it was dry I found some more flowers to photograph... :-)
That night we celebrated Walt's and my birthdays (which had been the
day before)
Sunday, September 9
Time to go home...and pack up and drive home was just about all we did. The weekends always go much too fast!
But here's a few last flower photos...
Other Links
Text and photographs copyright © 2002, by Laura Gilbreath. Feel free to link to this document, but you may not redistribute it in any form without the express written consent of the copyright holder.
Laura Gilbreath, lgil@cts.com