Leaving day finally arrived and at 6:00 AM on Monday the 23rd the little man came bounding into my room and said "Is it time to go yet" and so off we went. We had to go over to my office hitch up the tent trailer and finish our packing. Right as we were done with that we got a phone call from Mom who was shocked to find out that we were out of the house by the time everyone else had woken up. I had set a goal for an 8:00 departure, but it was her feeling that she would be forcing us out the door at 10:00. Boy was she suprised. Once we were packed up and hitched up we returned home for goodbye hugs and then we set off from home at 8:20 and headed for the East Fork Campground in the Inyo National Forest.
It's a long drive, about 337 miles according to the GPS. Trey found a few different ways to pass the time.
Me, I just drove. The drive up was very uneventful. The only excitement we had was watching a water dropping helicopter fly up and down Highway 395 while fighting a fire near Kennedy Meadows. We could actually see some of the "Hot Spots" from the Highway. Gas in Lone Pine ($5.19 a gallon for Diesel!!); Carl's Jr. and and ice in Bishop and we pulled into the campground at around 2:30.
Mark and Andre had already set up their tent in space 88, and had managed to save space 90 for us, so we backed the trailer in, unhitched and set up our home for the week.
The next morning, Tuesday, we headed up to the Rock Creek Lake Resort store to rent a boat for the day so we could do some fishing.
When we got on the water we noticed that there was a great deal of fishing going on very near the boat dock. So. after getting the slightly tempermental engine on our boat going, we went no further than 100 yards from the dock and dropped the anchor in about 6 feet of water (good thing to, because the anchor lines on the boats are probably only 25 feet long). The water was "gin clear" and cold to the touch.
We had heard that "Flourescent Red Power Bait" was the hot ticket, and I wanted Trey to catch his first fish, so I rigged up one of my rods and his rod with a slider, swivel, some leader, and a treble hook; placed a gob of bait on each of them them and cast them out. I handed Trey a pole and went to work on stringing my other pole with a lure. After a short time he said "I got one" and eagerly reeled in his line. The only thing on it was the bait. I explained to him how fisheman have to have some patience ( a line he would repeat back to me later in the week when I asked him to do something a little quicker than he was) and he cast his line out again.
About that time I noticed my pole bending up and down, so I told him to put his down and grab mine and reel. He did and was rewarded with his first ever fully self hooked trout, the smile on his face was absolutely priceless.
I love the second picture in that series. The one where I told him to reach in and pick up the fish and hold it. He thought about it, and then asked if I could just take a picture of it in the net. I was smiling and laughing so hard that I did, but I cut his face out, which is what picture three is. I finally got him to hold up the fish, after I put it on the stringer.
Notice the "walkie-talkie" in his left hand. We could see Mark and Andre fishing on the shore, and they had the other one and Trey could not wait to tell Andre about his fish.
More to come later. but I wanted to get these pictures up now....
