Lake Ahjumawi - A state park that you can only get to by kayak, canoe or shallow fishing boat. That is Shasta in the background. We could also see Lassen. We arrived in the afternoon and apparently there is a consistent GALE FORCE westwind in the afternoon. Maybe not quite that fast, but, it made for a 2 hour kayak to our campsite, 2 miles away.....s-l-o-w g-o-i-n-g.....
Shane had girls, which is a lot, in his boat and I had the Cussa kayak loaded with all the camping stuff plus our crazy dog. She kept going back and forth cuz it makes her nervous when she cant see everybody. She thinks she is a present day Lassie and water makes her shift into LIFEGUARD DOG mode. The kayak I had shifts left and right really easily so i was fighting this crazy wind in addition to my annoying dog tipping the boat back and forth. She was riding with Daddy on the way back!! It was an amazingly beautiful ride, though..lots of birds. I want to go back during a high migration time.
Once we made it to the campground, we had to lug our stuff 1/4 mile back and forth to our site. But it was worth it, it was so peaceful and beautiful. Well, that is until Jill started freaking out from sleep deprivation, at least that is what I am blaming it on, and had to stay with me and go to bed while Shane took Alli fishing.
They caught a HUGE fish, Alli was very proud.....
This state park does not get a lot of visitors, as was seen on the two hikes we went on... The first hike we went on we saw a coyote. The girls thought it was just someone else's dog. It was huge!! There must be lots of good eats for the coyotes in this area. We were trying to find a hike that led up to some lava caves. We did end up finding the trail junction, where the sign was completely faded from the sun and there was absolutely no trail to be found. It was possible we could have bushwacked through it, but given the high population of rattlesnakes we decided against that.
So instead we decided to stop for lunch....pull out the lunch bag...oh, didnt you pack the peanut butter and jelly, no....didnt you????? So one hour into a hike with 2 hours left to go and we have bread. Shane and I really messed this one up!! I told the girls, lets go back to the kayaks and paddle back to our campground to have lunch, but these girls wanted nothing to do with that...."We dont need food, we want to keep hiking!!" Crazy kids. I was hungry, so Hazel and I headed back to the kayaks, I roped the two kayaks together and got in to head back to camp....but where is Hazel....she is gone..as far as i know, she could have ran back to Shane and the girls, since she is part Lassie and probably thought they might be lost. Luckily after 3 or 4 minutes of calling her name she comes flying through the water and jumps on the kayak. I am not bringing her camping ever again!!
I finally paddle to camp and pack up some lunch stuff, then paddle all the way across the lake to the other campground where Shane and the girls would be ending their hike. I am paddling still pulling the second boat because we will need it to get all of us back to camp. I make Hazel stay in the boat i am pulling so I dont have to deal with her moving all around. We eat lunch, relax and then head back, just in time for the GALE FORCE winds to be in our faces again. Apparently we are slow learners...but we finally make it back to camp and have our dinner, the fish that Shane and Alli caught the night before. Shane is a little challenged trying to cook it on our backpacking cook gear, but it turns out great.
After dinner the girls remember that we were going to hike to the old Ranger Station. Shane and I are tired but they want to go so we do it. It is about a mile there and when we get there we realized it hasnt been inhabited by humans in a long time. We name it the mouse, rat, and bat lodge. After walking up to the door and seeing the ENTIRE floor covered in rat, mouse and bat feces, we high tail it out of there. No hantavirus for us!! We head back to camp and Shane takes both girls out to fish again, but nothing is biting this night...another sleepless night of listening to Hazel barking at everything and then we paddled out on the last morning on a lake of glass.
