Yesterday, I finally headed out of S. Lake Tahoe. I had one slight casualty on the way out of town. There was a bike race going on so we had to pull to the side of the road. Well, I got too close to one of the snow poles on the side of the road and it nailed the mirror on the passenger side. Luckily, it only cracked the corner of the mirror. Since it was a rainy day we didn't do much besides drive to the next campground. We headed to the Lakes Basin area of the northern Sierras. I decided to stay at a campground on Sardine Creek. Not bad, but nothing special. In the morning we took a short walk over to Sand Pond. There's a boardwalk that takes you over a marshy area that was pretty nice. After breakfast we headed out to find a good hike. We ended up doing 2. The first one went by Big Bear, Little Bear and Cub Lakes, and Long Lake. They are beautiful alpine lakes surrounded by pine trees and mountains. It was still pretty cloudy, but at least it didn't rain. It was a great hike for us, about 2 ' miles, with quite a bit of snow, which of course meant that Abbey got to roll in the snow a lot.
Not bad for a couple of gimps. We did so well that after lunch I decided we needed to do another hike. I found a mile long trail to Smith Lake. It didn't have any snow and was a little steeper than the previous hike but it was a good way to finish off the afternoon before getting back in the RV to drive to our next campsite. I decided to stay in a campground on Lake Almanor because it sounded pretty nice, but also because it had an RV dump station. Ah, my priorities sure have changed. The bummer was, though, that I found out in the morning that they charge you $5 to dump your tanks. It was still a nice campground though. We picked out a campsite with its own beach. It had a nice view of the lake which I enjoyed with a glass (read plastic cup) of wine from the dinette while I was waiting for the fire to kick in. This is the good life.