This past weekend, my wife and I invited Panda and Kitty to come do some camping and a bit of light wheeling with us near Bass Lake, CA.
When I went online last week to reserve a campsite in the area, there weren't any reservable sites left so we opted to take a chance on a remote campground that was on a first come first served basis. As it turned out, we stayed at Gaggs Campground and had the entire campground to ourselves.
Saturday morning, after a huge breakfast of hotcakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon, we started out for the Shuteye Peak Lookout Tower. The trail wasn't hard at all which wasn't really as important as what awaited us at the end of the trail, the lookout tower.
While we were inside the tower listening to the Tower Attendant explain his duties of, you guessed it, looking for forest fires, and smoke columns from campfires gone wrong, I pointed out a column of smoke about ten miles away. The attendant verified the location and called it in. A fire crew was dispatched to put out an abandoned campfire and the tower attendant told me I had earned a beer for the spotting and actually went down to his fridge and brought back an ice cold Coors.
The view from the tower is truly awe inspiring!
And, of course, no view is complete without a pic of our rides
On the way back down the trail, we saw a spot that would make a very nice picture and we each stopped in turn to take advantage of the view. 
Along comes Panda followed by Kitty
.
We returned to camp to a few much deserved drinks and a wonderful steak dinner curtesy of Panda and Kitty who also provided tasty lunches for everyone.
Sunday morning and another huge breakfast of homemade biscuits & gravy with potatoes o'brian before we set out in search of Browns Meadow. Not too sure if we ever found the actual Meadow or not as things do change after time, but we did manage to find more than our share of Manzanita bushes with thorns around an inch long. Just look what the thorns did to Kitty's ride, (It'll buff out, right?)
All in all, we had an incredible weekend with some very good friends, we'll definitely be doing this again in the near future.
When I went online last week to reserve a campsite in the area, there weren't any reservable sites left so we opted to take a chance on a remote campground that was on a first come first served basis. As it turned out, we stayed at Gaggs Campground and had the entire campground to ourselves.
Saturday morning, after a huge breakfast of hotcakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon, we started out for the Shuteye Peak Lookout Tower. The trail wasn't hard at all which wasn't really as important as what awaited us at the end of the trail, the lookout tower.
While we were inside the tower listening to the Tower Attendant explain his duties of, you guessed it, looking for forest fires, and smoke columns from campfires gone wrong, I pointed out a column of smoke about ten miles away. The attendant verified the location and called it in. A fire crew was dispatched to put out an abandoned campfire and the tower attendant told me I had earned a beer for the spotting and actually went down to his fridge and brought back an ice cold Coors.
The view from the tower is truly awe inspiring! And, of course, no view is complete without a pic of our rides On the way back down the trail, we saw a spot that would make a very nice picture and we each stopped in turn to take advantage of the view. Along comes Panda followed by Kitty. We returned to camp to a few much deserved drinks and a wonderful steak dinner curtesy of Panda and Kitty who also provided tasty lunches for everyone.
Sunday morning and another huge breakfast of homemade biscuits & gravy with potatoes o'brian before we set out in search of Browns Meadow. Not too sure if we ever found the actual Meadow or not as things do change after time, but we did manage to find more than our share of Manzanita bushes with thorns around an inch long. Just look what the thorns did to Kitty's ride, (It'll buff out, right?)
All in all, we had an incredible weekend with some very good friends, we'll definitely be doing this again in the near future.
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