New Years in Review

03 January 2007
New Years trip was fantastic. Another gorgeous weekend out in the desert. We never made it out to fish up those canyons, but as it turns out we're planning a separate trip up to the South Kern later in the spring anyway. We'll have to grab some new fishing licenses first, since we're into a new year. Happy new year!
We jeeped around and found some incredible rocks around the mines in those hills. If you're looking to find the spot, Google Maps it. We camp in the desert east of the intersection of Trona Rd and Stevens Mine Rd. The jeep is a wild little mountain goat. If you follow Stevens Mine Rd east until it ends in that little wiggly section, we jeeped up that wiggly section and over the saddle of the moutain, down into the canyon, and nearly got stuck. The ground is pure silt and boulders. After three amazing and totally wild attempts, I finally spotted a line that worked, and we made it out. Wild fun. Jeep jeep.
The desert makes me melancholy and quiet sometimes, thinking of my father and how much he loved this land. But for his health, he could easily have become an old desert coot. With a litte shack, some wood to work with, a few trout for dinner, and his girlfriend at his side, he would have been happy until the end of time. I miss him so.
We listened to Stevie Ray Vaughn's Pride and Joy back at camp, waiting for the New Year to come. I thought of him and showed Joe his silly little blues dance.
I'm still lusting after the golden trout in South Kern, but they will have to wait until the next trip. Until then, I'll be swimming and mountain biking my way into shape so all the hiking I plan on doing won't kill me. We've got a June Lake Loop trip planned in May, for my father's birthday... We'll most likely hike up to Parker, fish Rush Creek and Rock Creek (we tried to last year but ran out of time)... hopefully by then I'll have a good handle on flyfishing. Joe and I bought each other a pair of telescoping spincasting poles for christmas. Figures that we'd both get the same present for each other. Not only the same present, but the exact same poles. My sweetheart.
I ordered us two Shakespeare telescoping poles, but I ended up getting spinning poles, with the twist-lock reel seat, rather than conventional poles. Just wasn't paying attention, so now I have to send them back for spincasting poles. It works out, though, because the spinning poles are 5"5', the Big 5 poles we got each other are 6" poles, and the new Shakespeare ones will be 4"6'. We'll have packable lake and stream poles.
I highly recommend Outdoor World for ordering anything outdoor-related. Cabelas is nice, but Outdoor World is so much easier to deal with. Extremely helpful and polite employees. I spoke with Jackie and she was great.
I think that fairly soon here we're going to go on a jeeping trip with Jim Pilon. He wanted to go during the New Years trip, but his excursion would have taken us a few hundred miles in one day, and we had too many other, closer, things we wanted to do. So we'll probably make that excursion a separate trip.
A very sleepy Max cat is hanging out with me today. It's my day off.

0 comments: