[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement:
Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor
of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users'
privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your
privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket
to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we
also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.
Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your
contribution is not tax-deductible.)
PayPal Acct: 
Feedback: 
Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):
[ Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message ]
Date Posted: 10:40:20 10/27/05 Thu
Author: Rick
Subject: Mammoth trip
Well after many postponements we finally got to go on our Mammoth fishing trip. Ernie, Todd and I figured we could squeek out of the house for a weekend and get us some trout.
Todd and I departed from San Diego at about 1 am on Friday September 23rd. I was so excited to get out that it only took about an hour and change to get up to Buena Park where we were meeting Ernie (you do the math, we were haulin’). We load up Ernie’s Honda Odyssey mini-van and at about 2:30am we’re off !!! We’re already talking about old times when our whole families used to go up and fish for 10 days at a time. The good ol’ days! We get about 10 miles down Hwy 91 and KABOOOOOM!!!! SCREEEEEEEECH!!!! We lose a rear tire on the van. If not for Ernie’s lightning fast Steve McQueen-like driving skills we would have rolled over. Ernie gets the van back under control and gets us over to the shoulder where it takes about an hour to remove what’s left of his tire and put on the spare. We really need a new tire as the top speed of the doughnut is supposed to be 45mph and we’re never going to make it to Mammoth at that speed. The only problem is… its only 3:30am and there is absolutely nothing open at that time. But…we are so determined to go fishing that we end up driving about half of the 300 miles on the doughtnut spare tire. We get up to Manzanar which is the internment camp that Japanese Americans were held in during WWII. It’s still very early in the morning so we have some time to kill before we can find any gas stations/ garage/ tire stores to pick up a new tire. We decide to pull in and take a quick tour.
This first picture is of me and Todd checking out our scenic surroundings while standing in front of the memorial marker in the Manzanar cemetery.
The next picture is of some ritual where people leave small piles of pennies, toys and rocks.
We decided to take the driving tour of the entire camp.
This next picture is of Ernie and Todd on what used to be a paved road that went through the entire camp.
Another picture of me and Todd on the same paved road with Mt. Whitney as the backdrop. All along this road there are signs telling you what building was there. We are a couple of blocks down the road from the Mazanar Post Office. When you look at the signs you can almost picture the building that used to be there.
If anybody has been by Manzanar lately, there is a HUGE museum building and a replica of the guard tower that was recreated a number of years back. We tried to drive over to the area to where the tower is to get a picture but couldn’t find the road to get there.
Getting to Mammoth and trout fishing was our #1 priority so we didn’t really have time to go into the museum either. That’s something I’d definitely like to do one of these days. I really like looking at historical B&W pictures and trying to imagine what it was like back in those days.
Anyway…. We’re off again. We get up to Lone Pine and find us a hole in the wall tire shop. We end up picking up a gently used tire for $50 which is about twice the going rate of a used tire in San Diego. Whatever, they have to make their living off tourists like us somehow I guess. The tire guy is absolutely amazed that we drove all the way up from Anaheim on a doughnut spare averaging 60-65mph. He mounts up the tire and puts it on the van and we’re off to Mammoth. The next 150 miles are pretty uneventful. Ernie pulls the all nighter drinking large amounts of coffee that I didn’t think was even humanly possible. It seemed like GALLONS of coffee.
FINALLY we get into Mammoth in the mid morning and find that all of the upper lakes campgrounds that we wanted to camp in are CLOSED FOR THE SEASON!!!!. We do some driving and asking around and find that the only place open is the Cold Water Campground near Lake Mary. Ok it’s not ideal and its not the place that I had planned on but we drove through and checked it out and it was good enough. We set up camp and get our gear ready to go hit our favorite lake… Lake George. While I’m waiting for Ernie and Todd to get in the Van to drive up to George, I see a HUGE deer walking across one of the neighboring campsites. Its just cruisin’ along like it didn’t really care about anything. Really cool!!!
We drive up to Lake George and stake out our favorite spots on the shore. Ernie takes the honors for catching the first…. second….. third fish of the trip. He’s on his way to his limit (5). I catch a few in between there and Todd nails a few throwbacks. Ernie’s fishing pole is broken so he is actually fishing with only the bottom half of his pole. It’s VERY COLD and WINDY on Friday morning. The wind is up at about 20-25mph and that’s enough for it to blow water off of the lake’s surface and into our face on the shore!!!! These weird mini-hurricanes are blowing around in the middle of the lake causing these mini clouds to form right on the surface.
Here are some pictures from Friday
Todd holding up our catch from day 1 (Friday). If you look real close in this picture you will see some of the body damage to Ernies van as a result of the tire failure at 70+mph on hwy 91 at 3am.
Ernie and Todd holding up their stringers at the end of day 1 (Friday)
Here’s a picture of me…all bundled up holding up some of our catch for the day. Even with several layers of clothes on under my Gore-Tex jacket, a knit beanie cap and gloves, I’m still FREEZING!!! I also got a lot of sun as evidenced by my “raccoon eyes”.
At this point it’s getting dark and we’re all cold and tired. We go back to our campsite and I throw on what is probably the best meal you can eat on a cold camping trip like this. I had pre-made a HUGE pot of CHICKEN CURRY the night before. I throw it into a pot and heat it up. It’s SOOOOOO GOOOOD that nobody cares that our gohan is ice cold. We eat our dinner around the camp fire that really needed to be a raging forest fire in order to keep us warm that night. We are so starving that we end up polishing off the entire pot of Curry.
Sleeping that night turns out to be a total NIGHTMARE. Ernie is too lazy to inflate his air mattress (that we’re both sleeping on) up all the way so any time he gets up, I hit the ground. It’s a bumpy night. Ernie also ends up drinking too much beer and So Chu and snores like a bearJ. I sleep terrible that night.
The next morning the alarm goes off at o-dark-thirty (actually 6am). Any hard core fisherman would be getting up and heading out to fish. I stick my hand out of my sleeping bag, feel the cold and decide… ahh the heck with it! I’m gonna sleep some more. Ernie ends up waking me up at 8am. I get up and we make breakfast which consists of eggs and corned beef hash(10 cans for $10 at Albertsons). Gotta love Albertsons!
We head up to the Lake George at about 10am. It’s noticeably a more calm day so we stop to take a photo op at a scenic spot at Lake Mary.
We get up to Lake George and YEP, it’s gonna be a nice day.
Here’s a pic of Lake George with glassy water and the Crystal Crag in the background. For those of you that don’t know, that’s that huge rock up on the hill. The rock made famous by such dud movies as Revenge (starring Kevin Costner or Richard Gere I think) and Troop Beverly Hills (starring that irritating Dianne chick from Cheers) and some only released on video movie with Christian Slater that none of us know the name of.
Anyway, our favorite spots from the day before are being occupied by the people that were fishing next to us on Friday. They figured we had a good hole and they would have our luck if they got our spot. We end up taking spots about 50 yards down the shore from them.
Ernie takes the honors for the first catch of day 2. He and Todd and I all start nailin’ trout like they’re going out of style. The people that were in our spots from the day before are getting skunked. They are complaining that they have been in Mammoth for 4 days and they haven’t caught a thing. I can tell they are getting irritated. The fish seem to be following us to whichever spot we take. I’m fishing with 2 poles. The fish are hitting so hard that I can’t even keep bait on my line. I catch one and while I’m de-hooking him, one bites on my other line. I’m throwing my pole down and grabbing pole 2 and reeling in. The people fishing next to me are looking at me in disgust. Ernie and I end up nailing our limit plus a few more (we had 3 stringers we were trying to fill up).
Here’s a pic of Ernie’s stringer on day 2 (Saturday). 
Here’s a pic of my stringer on day 2 (Saturday)
Note the nice weather and my t-shirt/jeans wear as opposed to the day before.
We keep saying we are going to quit fishing early that day but we end up staying longer and longer. Finally when it’s starting to get dark again, we head back to camp. We are once again STARVING! We take our catch from the Friday and I bust out all the ingredients for the famous (and traditional for Mammoth trips) Ernest Hemmingway trout recipe. I HIGHLY recommend this recipe if you like trout. It may work on other fish too but I know for sure that it’s darn good on Mammoth trout. If you’re interested in eating some mackin’ good trout, you can email me and I will send you the recipe. Anyway, it’s not normally a big deal but its kind of an involved process if you are out camping. It’s totally worth it though. I am not going home until I eat me some trout that was cooked in the great Sierra outdoors!!!
I cook up about 3 trout each for us and serve it up. Its SOOOOO GOOOOD that we don’t even care that we are eating it with COLD gohan again. We sit around the camp fire and eat till we’re ready to pop.
That night we spend some time gathering fire wood. It’s cold but not as cold as the night before. We have a nice fire and go to bed at about 10pm. This time I make sure I inflate the air mattress the rest of the way so it’s MUCH easier to sleep on. Only problem is Ernie is still sawing logs and nothing helps... no matter how many times I wake him up, within a few seconds he is snoring again. Finally I’ve had enough. I go into the van and into my gun bag and pull out my ear protection headset that I use on the firing range. I put that on and sleep like a baby. I sleep so good that MY snoring is now bothering Ernie. Hahaha.
The next morning we get up and it is FREEEEEEEZING outside the tent… literally. The night before wasn’t so bad but some time between 4am and 8am the temperature really dropped.
Here’s a pic of me cooking breakfast (yep you guessed it… corned beef hash) on Sunday morning. Note the layer of ice on the table. When I got up the first thing I did was head for the coffee percolator…. which was frozen to the table!!! I go to light the stove and find that the match box is frozen shut and our 6gallon water jug is almost frozen solid inside!
Anyway, we eat breakfast and head up to Lake George. We try some different spots and we end up getting skunked on day 3 (Sunday). I’ve seen so many huge stringers of trout the 2 previous days that I’m thinking that the lake might be getting fished out. They only stocked with 650# of trout on Thursday and nobody is really catching much now. It gets to be about noon time and I decide that we’re going to have one last feast before we leave Mammoth. I bust out the Hibachi and cook up 4lbs of Korean short ribs, grill assorted veggies and finish off what’s left of the home made kim chee that Young’s parents made (YUM!). We eat until we’re stuffed and then depart. We take one last look at the Mammoth scenery and drive out of town.
On the way home, heading south on 395 about 9 miles before the town of Bishop, we see a sign that says “Rovana 3 mi.” and one that says “Paradise 4 mi.”. Normally when passing through this area we are with family and on a schedule to get to or from Mammoth but this day its just the guys. Curiosity gets the best of us and we turn off to see what Paradise is all about. It turns out to be 1 fishing camp, 1 bar, and further up the road a small neighborhood of modern houses out in the middle of NOWHERE!. We pick up a dirt road and go exploring the valley. We’re trying to get to a big alfafa field out in the distance but end up turning back and heading toward Rovana. This “town” turns out to be nothing more than a 40 unit housing development in the middle of NOWHERE!!!
On to Bishop….
We hit Bishop and stop off to get our customary Schat’s Bakery Chili Cheese bread and some coffee. On the way up we had been discussing trying out one of the Beef Jerky places that we see advertised on bill boards. We end up stopping at some hole in the wall place and buying about 4 different varieties of Jerky. My favorite was the Teriyaki. The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful… passing through the Mojave at dusk is pretty cool but it’s pretty much a straight shot home with no stops. On the way home we discussed maybe a family trip to Mammoth next year with some site seeing in addition to the trout fishing. So what do you all say???? Who’s up for a Mammoth trip????
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Replies:
[>
Re: Mammoth trip -- ernie, 14:29:53 11/23/05 Wed [1]
darn. previous message didn't go. Anyways- got the TIRE company to pay for my damage. They went for the Cheap quote at $1,200. I had to do a lot of bullshit to get it. Made a claim with Sam's Club- filled out forms, then they referred to Michelin- then they made me go get 2 appraisals. I wuz pretty conservative- didn't ask for any personal injury, didn't ask for reimbursement for the tire or to have the pro-rata part taken care of (they only credited 75% of the tire- but I bought the tire 4 yrs ago.) I responded to them on Atty letterhead..... I wonder if that had any effect....
[ Edit | View ]
[> [>
COOL!! -- Rick, 19:31:35 11/23/05 Wed [1]
Stick it back to the man!!! I'm glad that all worked out. Although it sucked that it happened it really contributed to this road trip being a true adventure... and made it a little more cool to tell the story.
[ Edit | View ]
[> [>
Re: Mammoth trip -- Todd, 18:27:04 11/25/05 Fri [1]
Ernie, we bought schats cheese bread for you and it was still in the car when we got home
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [>
Re: Mammoth trip -- ERNIE, 22:13:50 11/27/05 Sun [1]
oH CRAP- i'LL COME DOWN later to pick it up... unless it looks bad....
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [>
Re: Mammoth trip -- ernie, 16:37:33 11/28/05 Mon [1]
P.S. I read the Mammoth description to Young-- she laughed so hard about the nightmare night.
--Hey- what about some journalistic accuracy!!!
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [>
LOL -- Rick, 19:57:27 11/28/05 Mon [1]
That's bout as accurate as it gets. U have another account of what went down? Lets hear it! I bet u don't remember tho... glug glug. burp. lol.
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: LOL -- ernie, 11:22:15 11/29/05 Tue [1]
Well, for starters- I was the one who wanted to start the forest fire under the trees by barbecuing at- omigod- at the picnic tables-- instead we lug them way off to some tall himalayan mountain where Todd is a small dot fishing.
Then lets talk about the EXPERT cooker who dropped all of the beef ribs and I took over then everything went perfect because that's who I am.... perfect.... OK.. I have to give you the fact that you were a busy bee doin' a lot of work while we were chillin..
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
yep -- Rickster, 20:04:52 11/29/05 Tue [1]
LOL. Riiiiiight... lets light a bbq while it's sitting under pine trees... brilliant>;-)
[ Edit | View ]
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: yep check -- ernie, 12:15:47 12/19/05 Mon [1]
Got the Check!! Woo hoo- Now I can repair the van. I figure anything is better than nothing...
I gotta get the trailer fixed for Mammoth... - but been busy trying to move etc...
[ Edit | View ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]
Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
