Why we dislike fishermen April 27 - 30, 2001 or how we got discriminated by allegedly silent lunatics on our three-day trip.

	Butte Lake

	This is just another way of living in America

For Friday night we set up our new Moslem alarm-clock. We needed to wake up FOR SURE and this one did not leave any doubt. Result? I could not sleep the whole night for fear it would rip me out of my dreams with its horrible howl (here in .wav and .mp3) - twenty minutes before the expected moment we were fully alert . Hence our departure took place in the hour we planned it, and something unbelievable became reality -- for the first time since I came here I saw the City without its obligatory congestion.

Having endured some eighty miles behind the wheel, I began to be endlessly grateful to Sid's boss, for his letting Sid ride along. My head started dropping to my chest (when I get up too early, I can function for about three hours and then I totally collapse), but we still had about three hours to go to Redding. Our wagon started yawning its hungry filler, and it demanded to have a liquid breakfast. I took advantage of our pumping stop and switched from driver's seat to passenger's, before Sid could change his mind. As he pulled away from the pump, our greenhorn Lesley raised a question if we perhaps should also pay. We brushed her off nonchalantly that a credit card transaction already took place. That diluted some of her anxiety, but then she still managed to whisper, "So you don't even have to take the hose out?"
And so we had to give up our attempt to take the whole gas station with us . Fortunately, the nozzle slid out and there was no damage on the wagon and the pump.

	A view across a valley near Sugarloaf, Lassen NP

	If you claw your way through rows of fishermen, the scenery may even become pretty

The time arrived to have our morning coffee. Although Sid grumbled that they only have sweet stuff at a coffee shop, he eventually ordered a toasted bagel with a yummy spinach spread -- I must say that the result was much tastier than my muffin the suffocator. The rest of this leg of our trip probably happened without incidents -- I curled into a ball on the back seat, letting Lesley entertain Sid and keep him awake. This one week with a visitor was quite hard for me -- in six months, I must have disaccustomed to English, here in America!! In Prague I had to converse daily and solve issues, while here the apex of my foreign language dialogue reaches the level of greeting someone at a grocery store!

I woke up just as we were getting there -- the place Lesley was visiting after ours is located on a beautiful spot -- Vivian's farm sits on a hill near Cottonwood, CA. Surrounded by green grass, tall trees, and happy cattle -- with a view to Lassen Peak and Mt. Shasta. A healthy woman in her sixties welcomed us, and I kept waiting to meet Vivian, who's 84. Soon I realized my mistake -- people just don't seem to age in this place.

	Lake Almanor

	Somewhere down there is Monitor Pass - I am standing at about 8000 feel elevation (under 3000 metres). The wind is so strong that I can barely hold my balance.

We accepted invitation to a home-made soup and ice cream with strawberries, let Vivian identify Mt. Shasta for us (we were arguing which snow-capped peak it was), and then passed Lesley and her bags on, leaving towards white slopes of Lassen. A wonderful location awaited us in a national forest, close to the Park - a clearing with a place for fire between tall pines, far enough from a highway, filled with the smell of trees and needles. Within half an hour we were laying in our tent and sleeping off our cruel morning.

We had a light snack at five p.m. and drove over to Butte Lake. Right next to it is also Tub Lake, named probably by pleasant (swimming) water temperature. The whole Lassen is volcanic, and black ashes at the bottom of the lake absorb sunlight and heat up the water. I must admit we did not try it -- sever feet of snow piled around the lake, hidden in backwoods, did not look too invitingly. Instead we decided to restore our strength with a dinner, heading into a nearest civilized point -- some 40 miles remote Susanville.

Susanville, CA, consists mainly of motels and hotels -- we were hoping for a friendly pub, where they would serve us an evening meal. There were a few, but only one looked like locals' choice. Josefina's (that was it's name) served Mexican delicacies, speakers played polka (Mexican "folk" music suspiciously reminds of it remote Czech equivalent, and relationships are not hard to deduce -- Mexicans were, at least during some phase of their history, subject to ... our good old Habsburg family! I wonder how many Czechs served in Mexican, Austrian - Hungarian armies???) and our waitresses ran around -- in ancient costumes. Needlepoint lace blouses, embroidered black skirts above knees -- just instead our usual flowers and birdies the main motive were geometric Indian shapes.

	Eagle Fall rushes its waters into Emerald Bay at Tahoe Lake

	It's not hard to imagine that a glacier used to form this valley

We threw ourselves hungrily at chips and salsa; our waitress told us that the she decided not to bring us any more salsa, for we would not be able to finish our dinner. We thought she was exaggerating, but besides one half of my burrito, we had to leave behind even about one third of Hippo's portion -- and that does not happen often! We sadly rolled away from the table -- considering our complete lack of a refrigerator we could not ask for a doggie bag -- and watched heartbroken, as they carried the remains of this wonderful food towards its ultimate, sad destination.

Having no problem finding our tent, we only discovered that while we were gone, mean rocks grew out from the ground under it -- but eventually we fell asleep. By the morning, discomfortable boulders got company in the form of a creepy cold, and then a drizzle. It made a strange hissing sound, and did not feel like a real rain. During one moment when it went away temporarily, we decided to pack our tent -- Sid crawled out and as he opened our entrance, a wet snowball rolled in... well, it wasn't drizzling!!!

	Mono Lake vista

	Formerly booming town of Bodie...

Frozen, wet, we packed somehow and moved to Old Station, to thaw again with a breakfast at a local cafe. The locals laughed at our idea to drive through Lassen Park. They claimed that it was blocked by about thirty feet of snow and roads will be made passable again in summer. Damn the mountains, damn the snow. We drove off south, with a vision of hot springs at Mono Lake in our minds.

The way there took us all day, with all those stops we usually make. We stopped at a viewpoint to parts of Lassen Park, where I finally learned that the whole thing was named after a blacksmith Peter Lassen; we stopped at a nameless creek that we liked a lot, we stopped at a viewpoint to the only island on Lake Tahoe, where allegedly a ghost of drowned captain Dick Barker appears at night, in Emerald Bay, where we met our real wild bear last summer (Sid said he "forgot to arrange" for it this time). We stopped in Monitor Pass, where a eight thousand feet hill lured us out of the car (we reached the top completely breathless, while the wind breathed very strongly) to overlook Carson Iceberg Wilderness -- and throughout the trip, we were haunted by fishermen. Thousands of RV's everywhere, cars and trucks parked along every river and creek, and ultimately hotels and motels in Bridgeport booked full.

	A church in Bodie looks quite maintained

	... full of gold-diggers and desperados (oops, it's Sid!!!)

We had no other choice but to drive on to Mono Lake, and try our luck at Murphey's motel in Lee Vining, where we stayed before. A lady at the reception had good news for us (an available room), and bad news -- the rest of the motel was taken by fishermen, who were planning to get up insanely early. She was right. Our room was clean and comfy, but by 4:44 am, we heard loud steps, booming voices, trucks being started, shouts being yelled, and other similar manly performance. I tolerate if somebody nurtures a deviation which requires sitting by and gazing at water, followed by boasting in a bar that it was sooooo big, yet I don't understand why they have to bother everybody else with it at five in the morning. I hope that all those noisemakers were eventually blessed with numerous vacationing families, each with minimum five kids under ten years of age, who kept yelling and screaming and yipping and crying and hollering, until all the fish fled far far away -- that'd be some justice!

There's only one food place in Lee Vining, and they must like fishermen just like I do. It seemed to be an unimpressive, yet acceptable restaurant in the fall, but now it turned horrible: a very lax service, I returned my toasted bagel, because it was moldy; I got another one, equally moldy; Sid pulled a long black hair out of his hash browns. We attributed it all to exhaustion caused by fishing hordes and quickly drove somewhere "riverless". The desert around Mono Lake appeared to be a welcome alternative.

	Town stays inhabited by ghosts and ground squirrels

	Main street in Bodie

We fired up our GPS and found a nearest road to a gold rush ghost town of Bodie. A sign partially blocking the dirt track said ROAD CLOSED, but there was no word on why and it did not seem so imperative -- we decided to try our luck anyway. After a few miles we met a SUV going in the opposite direction, and asked the driver if the road was passable. He looked somewhat confused -- well, sure, he was going on it... there was no closure from the other side, not even a warning!

A beautiful view to Mono Lake opened behind a curve. We stopped and hiked up on the nearest hill for a few pictures. And then we were again driving downhill, to Bodie. W.S.Bodey found gold here in 1859, they named the place after him and soon it became the most populated area far and wide. Through the years, mines delivered gold for $100 million -- and the town started falling apart. In the thirties (20th century), last inhabitants left, and since 1964 the town in listed as a National Historical Monument.

	Here's our quiz. What was the function of this (practically only) brick building in Bodie? Win a nice prize!

	A home at Bodie

We stayed relatively long in Bodie -- all tourists were most likely fishing and we were left almost alone to wander ancient (in American historical scale) streets. Bodie is a real "ghost town" -- houses are preserved, door locked, window panes glazed -- and one can see remaining equipment left behind by original dwellers -- beds, chairs, basins, carpets, a furnished classroom, everything quite in order and covered by a thick layer of dust. None of the houses ever became a salespoint of quasihistorical souvenirs and postcards, there's no restaurant where tourists, exhausted by overwhelming impressions, would merrily stuff their fat faces. The town of shadows seems pathetic even if full sunshine -- you walk among dead houses and skeletons of carts and carriages. Only living permanent inhabitants are omnipresent ground squirrels.

	There's no way through the mountain range, we have to circle around...

	The sun is setting behind the Sierra - there somewhere in the second row of peaks, in the right half of the picture, is Mt. Whitney, the highest continuous U.S. mountain

We had to drop by Murphey's, having forgotten a loaded battery charger for our camera, then we drove south again. After about an hour, Sid turned left into the desert and we began to look for hot springs. Right the first one looked great -- a tub just for two, with a pleasant bathing temperature. Unfortunately, a couple was just leaving, who had the wonderful idea to wash their dog in it. Water was full of hair and who knows what else (I think I will rank dog owners right behind fisherman, in my private popularity list). We tried luck further down, but the next spring was too hot, another was crowded by too many people... we were running out of patience, we were baking in the hot desert sun, and bumpy dirt roads through the wasteland did not add anything to our comfort. The last spring held three guys, but the tub looked big and we fit it nicely. After getting in and out about three or four times, you start feeling just like being in a sauna.
Time came to go home. All passes through Sierra Nevada were still closed, we had to drive all the way south to Tehachapi Pass. The whole way back home took us eight hours. We arrived at one a.m. and our tachometer read 1,400 miles in three days.

We think that it's time to announce another quiz. This time you may guess wheat was the function of practically only brick building in Bodie, CA. There's a picture of it above -- for your inspiration. Send your contributions to Carol. Winners will receive a nice postcard from our next trip.

Copyright © 2001-2008 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.