It’s clearly time for us to leave the deserts. It’s getting hot and things are drying up. My Worthington guitar, trusted friend of a lifetime, has sprung a new crack. I’m sure it has been caused by the extreme dryness of desert life. We often say to ourselves, “ If you don’t like your attitude, change your altitude.” Funny, in business I used to say, “ Your attitude will determine your altitude.” Nonetheless, it’s time for some greenery and cooler climes.
We’ve decided that on this move we will direct ourselves at a targeted area and just simply see what we can find. We think it’s a bit daring for California this time of year in that we’ve heard you need to book reservations 6 months to a year out in order to find any decent place to camp. Lake Isabella area is our target. So, off we go, careening through the edges of Death Valley in Nell with Quicksilver in tow. Long inclines and declines of hundreds of feet in altitude until we climb to California, the late, great Golden State. We climb the western edge of the southern Sierras passing over Walker Pass, named after the legendary mountain man, Joe Walker. We descend into a beautiful and broad valley where the most precious resource on earth is stored to slake the thirst of Bakersfield some 30 miles below these foothills...Lake Isabella. It’s a gorgeous sight after so much taste of sand, rock, and creosote bush for most of the winter. It’s not that we don’t love the deserts we’ve stayed in, it’s that a change is good and welcome.
Lo and behold, Diane spies a large and peaceful cove...Stein Cove, with a lone camper nestled on the banks of the lake. Sure enough, this is National Forest land and dispersed camping IS allowed. No water, no electricity, no dump, but what a glorious campground it is! We set up camp here for 10 or so days...no charge, no fee.
Soon enough we notice that the lake is rising and one visit to the lake’s supply...Kern River, about two miles north, gives plenty of evidence as to the cause. Kern is boiling and roiling with spring runoff from the ample snows of last winter. They say 160% of a normal winter fell. Over the course of our ten day stay we had to move our camp twice to higher ground to avoid going under water. I made a game of it by placing stone cairns where I thought the water would reach each day when we awoke.
There is a two lane road that follows the Kern up into the Sierras. Some of the side roads that branch out into the forest are still closed due to the snow and winter’s damage. However, the main road is open all the way to the Sequoia grove that sits at 6000’ above the desert floor. Diane and I have not seen Giant Sequoias before. We hiked through these skyscrapers where you crane your neck to see the tops. The forest floor is ribboned with little creeks and springs. Giant pine cones from towering Sugar Pines lay shuffled with the miniature cones of the Giant Sequoias. (Even in nature irony is always present.) The massive scope of these ancient trees is overwhelming. We...Diane and myself, Dash, and Heidi, revel in the misty range of the giant forest. Clambering over fallen trunks, splashing though ankle deep creeks, inhaling the fresh green scents on waves of fast-moving clouds scouring the mountain tops, we have a purely joyous afternoon in the Sequoias of the southern Sierras.
Close by, meaning a mountain range removed, the US Navy has what I think is their Top Gun airbase. I think that it must be a training base for air combat because every single day F-18’s, or perhaps they are F-22 fighter jets, race after each other through the very narrow canyon of the Kern. Most pof the time they are just a few hundred feet off the deck, banking severely left and right as they blast through the valley to avoid the canyon walls. One one particular day as I was hiking along Brush Creek I counted 7 jets in about 15 minutes. Personally, I get the biggest rush out of seeing this spectacle play out. The sound itself is so intensely immediate that I find myself shouting back at them as they burst through the canyon curves and bends. I can easily imagine how shocked and instantly terrified one would be if you were their enemy, but in this setting I am thrilled by it. One a rare day, a seemingly ancient propeller-driven sea plane circles the lake and practices landing and take-offs on Isabella. These behemoth gas engines belch and rumble almost as loudly as the jets, yet on a lower scale...something like I imagine a Sperm whale’s bellow to be. What a show!
Our ten days on Lake Isabella and alongside the raging Kern River were glorious times. Buoyed by the fresh change in altitude and environment and the “freeness” of our current adventure, we took in everything our five senses could harbor. Our personal batteries were recharged much in the same way the southern Sierras now are from the winter’s deeply needed snow melt.