California camping [1]

Set the WABAC machine to October 2002. Ken and I took a camping trip through eastern California. We left San Francisco and headed up and over the Sierra Nevada mountains to our first destination on the eastern side, a campground near Twin Lakes. At some point, we stopped for lunch. Then, as we climbed up over the Sonora Pass, it started to snow. Not a great beginning, but it wasn't a big storm and we made it through.

It started snowing as we drove over the mountains. This is a car on the road in front of us.

We had made reservations for the campground on line, but only for the purpose of payment. If I remember correctly, we registered on arrival by filling out a form and dropping it into a box. There were no staff, no rangers, and very few other campers.

The Sonora Pass, pretty high up. A little more than 2,900 meters.

We set up our tent and built a fire. We had a good dinner, then settled in for the night. It got cold, and it may have snowed a little. Our little dog Collette slept between us in the tent, but she started shivering so much that we took turns keeping her inside our sleeping bags. We all survived the night.

Setting up our campsite. There weren't very many other people there. That's me in the photo.

The next morning, everything was covered in ice. The first thing we did was to drive around for a while to take advantage of the car's heater. Then we went to the nearest town for a hot breakfast. Once thawed, we decided that we could not possibly spend another frigid night in the tent. So we packed up and drove south toward Mono Lake and found a motel that would let us have the dog in the room. Thank goodness!

By the way, these are Ken's photos. I was driving and he took pictures out the window. This was around the time that he was discovering digital photography. I was still taking color slides back then, but I started using one of Ken's digital cameras to see how I liked it. I'll post some of my digital shots tomorrow.