Day 1
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After dark, someone started a campfire just outside the lodge and gave everyone little baggies with marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers so you could make your own Smores. Then everyone sat around and told bear stories. It occurred to me that bears must like smores by the campfire, too. I took my glass of wine, went to our room and got organized for the next day’s exploration of the area.
Although “Gold Lake” is really a lake, it’s also an area of lots of little cold lakes, all filled with small fish, mosquitoes and garter snakes. They all have names like Upper Sardine, Lower Sardine, Smith – the lakes, not the wildlife. But the scenery is very beautiful, and amazingly serene. I say amazingly serene because there were plenty of people around us at all times, yet it didn’t seem crowded or noisy. Everyone just flowed along at an even pace, gave each other room to move and listened more than they spoke.
On our first day, we all rose in sunny but slightly crisp surroundings and got ready to explore. For those of us who need a shower to fully awaken (okay, that would be me), the “getting ready” part was a little more challenging than planned. Since we had made our reservations so late, we couldn’t get a cabin, and were given the Heather Room in the lodge. It was large, very serviceable, and had clearly been recently remodeled. However, the shower just didn’t work. Nothing but ice cold water dribbled from the shower head. After messing with it for several minutes, I finally squeezed my head into the shiny, new, miniscule sink and washed my hair. After the dizziness passed, I dressed and went downstairs to breakfast.
Breakfast at the lodge is a mountain of pancakes, fruit, and whatever else your heart desires. Marcus ate a reasonable amount of scrambled eggs, bolted down his apple juice, and then bolted out the door to the “Game Room”. The Game Room has a pool table, a ping pong table, and bookshelves full of board games and paperbacks. The kids decided that pool was a great game. He and Nick Lofquist also found the Bar, which would give you sodas (charged to your room) and little plastic toothpicks. Neither of them could play pool without a plastic toothpick stuck sideways out of their boyish mouths. Although I have wondered what Marcus would choose as a career, pool shark has never really occurred to me… until now.
At breakfast we met the two families that had “joined” us for the week. Linda and Gary met Kathy and Jim from Sacramento on their previous trip. This year, Kathy and Jim’s friends, Alyssa and Greg came with them. Alyssa is from South Carolina and swears that she had to move because her hair just wasn’t big enough, but the truth is, she’s a Big Haired Gal, no matter how she flattens her ‘do. In the week that I saw her, out in the wilds of the Sierras, Alyssa’s makeup was always flawless, her nails were always polished, and her hair wasn’t just combed or fluffed – it was coifed. I mention this for a reason that will become clear later.
The plan was to go on a short hike in the morning, then the guys had reservations to play golf in the afternoon, while the moms took the kids to one of the lakes to play. That was the plan. I went upstairs to our room to gather the camera and sunscreen, came outside to go on the hike, and… no one was around. I walked up and down the little dirt lane that winds through the cabins and didn’t see anybody I knew. Damn. They ditched me. Taking a magazine, I went down to the porch and read, trying not to look pitiful. Eventually, Jeannie and Linda found me, and reported that they didn’t know where the men and the kids were. Gary had said that they were going over to the waterfall, which was in view of the cabins, but somehow they had disappeared. So we hung out and talked and waited for them.
About forty-five minutes or so later they all came traipsing back, having hiked to Lily Lake, a small pond near the cabins. Gary claimed that he said they were going on this hike, and Jeannie had said that we didn’t want to go. Jeannie’s version was that he said they were going to the waterfall, and she said we would wait and go with them on the hike. Of course, the group believed Jeannie, and decided that every miscommunication and misadventure of the entire trip would be blamed on Gary (he was agreeable to this). According to those who went along on Gary’s trip, he took all of the children on a romp through brambles, briars and pointy thorns in the deluded belief that the trail he was looking for was “just around this corner.” It wasn’t. They then had to backtrack through the scratchy wilds to the road, where they found the trail. Not surprisingly, no one in Gary’s tour group wanted to accompany those of us who hadn’t been to the little lake, so our small group hiked over to it. It was very small and marshy, surrounded by large trees. The air around us seemed uncomfortably warm and heavy, so we didn’t linger. Apparently it took us less time than the first group for two reasons: we didn’t have all of the children with us, and we took the real trail, instead of Gary’s trek through the brambles.
