Saturday, August 7, 2010

WRIGHT'S LAKE COULD DO ME NO WRONG

Yesterday, for my birthday, my friend Janice and I headed out for Wright’s Lake. Wright’s Lake has been beckoning me to come to see her, but there was more than one time she was destined to deter me. Twice from too much snow and yesterday, the regular road up there was being worked on and traffic was detoured.

First, let me tell you, I really thought several times of obstacles getting in the way would deter our plans, but we were both determined to get up there.

I drove, and as all of you know, I still get a bit of white knuckling in me when driving these curvy roads, especially when there’s a ravine so steep, you can’t see the fall. It was still also very difficult for me to see in the morning sun the roads because of the contrast of the shade of the trees and sunshine and on curvy roads, which is extra dangerous. There were several trucks hauling horses and motor homes on a not too wide road and pulling over for the other to pass scared me a lot thinking they were going to scrape the side of my van or me pulling to the side and going into a ditch. I believe the regular road, the road being worked on, would have handled these problem a bit better. There were cars following me closely and there weren’t that many pull outs to let them pass. All of these pressures gained their grips on me, but by the time we arrived at the lake, all of those pressures disappeared with the site of what we saw. Unfortunately, we started hearing a noise coming from the right tire. We stopped and looked all over and under that side of the van. We didn’t see anything hanging or dragging off the tire, but it sounded like every time the tire would go around while driving, it would make a clapping noise that sounded like a horse’s hoof striking the road. It was as if something was stuck to the tire and going around making the noise. Fortunately, the noise went away on our trip home.

Wildflowers, boulders, granite hills, a number of different kinds of bushes and trees were seen immediately as we entered the campgrounds. Everything that you could want to see on a day hike all rolled in one. We even hiked up to see what was called Beauty Lake. It was a smaller lake than Wright’s Lake, but as still, flat, and shown like a mirror.

The site where Mr. Wright had is cattle ranch in 1850 was memorialized and we stepped off the trail to see what he saw. He saw a beautiful meadow with large pine trees circling it. He didn’t see the lake from his ranch, which was named after him, but the lake wasn’t too far away.

Since it was my birthday, Janice brought along some yummy African tea, lemon bars and gave me the cutest birthday card she made with a photo of one of her parrots she has as pets.

We hiked almost five miles during the six hours we were there, but we just took our time to take it all in before we were ready to leave. We were on the curvy road again, but less pressure going down the hill.

So here are some photos of our adventurous day.

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