Graeagle CA Vacation- Part 1 of 3

I took a vacation from the beautiful Pacific Northwest last week, and traveled with Dave and his mom to Graeagle, CA.  It was an idyllic week of sunshine, lakes, happy people, good food, billions of deer and nonstop fun.  I should have journaled each day, because all the fun blended together and this blog won’t be particularly chronological.  : )  In addition, Dave has a lot of the pictures on his camera, so more pictures will be added.

The town of Graeagle itself was charming and laid back.  Everyone I met was friendly and pleased to have people notice what a gorgeous part of this Earth they occupy. 

One of my favorite things we did on this trip was spend an entire day hiking and exploring.  Dave and I joined his aunt and her friend and their two dogs (I missed Adventure Dog- he stayed home), for a hike to Hellgramite Lake.  There and back again may have been about a 3 mile round trip hike, past Bear Lakes, Cub Lake, Long Lake,  and Silver Lake.  I may have some of these lakes mixed up as I saw several of them from different angles, and I’m now using my map to try to retrace my steps.  His aunt and friend went back the way we came, but we continued on, off trail quite frequently around to Round Lake and back much later in the day- likely going around 6 miles round trip, although at least a mile or two were off trail, so difficult to judge.  Here are some of the lakes. 

Did I mention that the stars here are so plentiful and bright that it is hard to pick out the major constellations from the mass of other sky-diamonds?  If you wonder where they go during the day, I found them… every ripple of these blue blue lakes sparkled with starlight.  Ok, so it was sunlight, but it was magically beautiful.

Here is a map of where we were.

On our hiking adventure we checked out some mining operations.  What was left of the Round Lake mine and stamp mill was interesting.  The mysterious pieces of rusty metal left to bake in the sun and freeze under winter snow laid among the tailings. 

We also found other mines at undisclosed locations and checked them out.  It was exhilarating and though we never saw a flake of gold it didn’t stop us from obsessively looking.  I think we examined every piece of quartz in Northern CA. 

The same day we also checked out Frazier Falls, a stomach-turningly-tall frothy drop of the Frazier River over a cliff. 

The first night there, we caught the sunset over Gold Lake. 

Another butte-iful attraction in this area were the Sierra Buttes.  They were rugged and compelling, drawing the eye with a different view from blue sky daytime, to stormy clouds, to sunset. 

To wrap up this first installment of the California trip, I will leave you with trees.  The trees here were fascinating.  Not being part of a rain forest like the trees at home, they weren’t as covered with moss, ferns, salal and other obstructions so you could see them. 

So many tall huge firs and ponderosa pine in the forests, and then the ones on the hills were all twisted and bent from the strong winds and deep snows.  In places that moss did grow, you could see the snowline.