Babyfoot Lake

So my plans to hike part of the Kalmiopsis Rim Trail kinda failed.  We parked at the Babyfoot Lake trailhead and meant to take a connecting trail but missed it (found it later) and ended up at Babyfoot Lake.  I am more out of shape than I'd originally thought and decided to camp at the mini lake and go find the trail I wanted to hike and do a bit of it without a 50 pound backpack.

Babyfoot Lake is barely within the border of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.  You basically find a metal sign stating the land behind it is a wilderness blah blah blah, then come to the lake.  The lake is only about 9 feet deep, has a few trout in it and has many really big, old trees that have fallen into it over the years.  A nice little place to visit.

I dropped off my pack, hoisted any food and smelly items into a tree then grabbed my day-pack and took off to find my trail.  At first we tried to find where the #1224A (which is the Babyfoot Lake trail) connected to the #1224 (Kalmiopsis Wilderness Rim Trail) on the northwestern side of the lake.  He found bits and pieces of it but it looked like that particular section hadn't been used in years since there was so much stuff grown over it.  The underbrush made it very difficult to navigate and I didn't want to get lost so we turned around and headed back down the Babyfoot Lake trail to find the split.

We did find the split, trail #1126 which connected to the #1124 up about three miles.  I figured we could do that but I didn't know we'd have to climb a killersteep ridge to get up to it first.  We did get to the top of the ridge and hiked out about 1 1/2 - 2 miles along it then stopped for lunch. We could see Babyfoot Lake down below us from up there.  In the picture above, look at the rim. Find the highest spot. That's where we were. A good 700 feet higher than Babyfoot, all climbed within that short mile and a half.

Conker decided that he didn't want to be clean anymore and rolled on the trail during lunch.  He also decided he wanted to decorate himself with tree sap which was a bad idea since it drove him nuts for the rest of the trip.
The rocks up there on the rim were funny, if you poured water on them they hisses really loudly.  I thought there was a snake nearby when I spilled a bit of water and the rocks began to hiss.

After lunch we headed back down to Babyfoot Lake.  We discovered that the trees that had fallen into the lake were very stable so I walked out onto one. Conker didn't really want to go with me but followed anyways.  I jumped in the lake (Conker stayed on the log) and found it to be quite nice.  I figured it'd be cold.

For the next couple hours I let Conker wander around the camp and surrounding section of the lake.  I read while he explored and some menacing looking clouds built up above us.  I knew what the clouds meant, and when thunder began to roll through the valleys I pitched the tent.  I waited until it was actually raining before calling Conker over and introducing him to it.  After the first minute he was fine with it and tried to sleep as rain and eventually hail pelted down on my little orange tent.

Conker decided, before and after the storm, that exploring just the lakeside wasn't good enough.  Wile I was making some tea I looked out at the lake a spotted something on one of the big logs.  It was Conker.  He'd gotten up on the log all on his own, walked out a bit then looked at me.  He kept looking back as he walked out to the very end then walked back.  He turned this into something he did about every 20 minutes. After a bit of exploring, he would go walk out into the lake on a log.

The bugs got a git unbearable as the sun was setting so after dinner we retreated to the tent.  We napped, er, Conker napped while I read, then slowly dozed off as the night fell.
I was suddenly reminded why I don't like camping in the woods when I woke to a crashing sound near the tent and Conker's low growl.  I don't know what kind of animal it was but it sounded big.  Not as big as a bear, maybe a deer, and it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  The rest of the night was filled with more crashing, snapping and shrieking as the animals of the wilderness paid their nightly visits to the lake.  Conker didn't bark, only growled quietly.  I knew none of these visitors were bears, I've heard a bear outside my tent before and these were different sounds.

Deer, raccoons, skunks and what I found out later to be foxes were the main visitors.  But one of the last to come definitely was a bear.  Heavy yet soft footsteps, snuffing every little scent, scraping it's long claws on random fallen logs as it navigated the area around my tent.  This was the only animal Conker barked at, but it was a very restrained bark.
Surprisingly everything up until then scared me.  The foxes (which make freaky screaming sounds) were the scariest when I first heard them shrieking and crashing about. Two even got into a fight.  The only protection I'd brought with me was that big knife and it stayed right beside me.  I'd picked up the knife when the foxes began to fight, and right that after the bear came.  For some reason holding the knife made me feel better, and the bear either lost interest in the lake and our camp or Conker scared it off when he barked.  It left rather quickly.  Not many other animals visited after that, and the big knife spent the rest of the night inside my sleeping bag.


So!  That was out little adventure to Babyfoot Lake.  I knew already that camping next to a lake, in the wilderness, probably wasn't the greatest idea and paid for it with my sleep, but it was a fun trip anyways and Conker really enjoyed exploring the lake and walking out on the logs.  Next time I go out there it will either be just a daytrip or I'll camp somewhere along the trail I originally wanted to and just stop in at Babyfoot Lake on the way in or out.

Sorry for lack of pictures, my photobucket upload limit has been reached. 

Lake Tahoe

We left somewhat later than I'd wanted.  Sometime around 12:30, then we stopped at a bunch of places before actually hitting the road. Conker wasn't fond of the car ride, as usual, but managed to sleep most of the way.
We got to our campsite around 9:30, took forever to set up and talked with the relatives.

The next day we did a lot of nothing then went to the lake.  Conker wasn't allowed on the beach but I found a small creek and let him play around in it since it was pretty warm that day.  I walked Conker around a lot while other people swam in the lake.
The lake itself was very pretty but I forgot to take a picture of it.

That afternoon... I can't really remember what we did but talking with the relatives, as long as they stayed away from religion, politics and conspiracy theories was good.

 Conker's favorite activity around the camp was walking down to the creek.  One day my cousin and I went creek sploring with Conker and while walking on some old logs, Conker tried to step onto some floating bark that he thought was solid. 
He did that about six times before I was able to get him away from it and farther down the creek.




The next two days were exiting for Conker.  My siblings and cousin went frisbee golfing and took Conker along.  He really wanted to chase the frisbies so I let him in the wide open areas.  He was good about going after mine instead of the others and dropped it if I told him to when he picked it up.

I ended up finding a dog store and bought Conker a bunch of Zuke's Z-Ridge things since nobody in my town sells them.  They had two new flavors and Conker much prefers the apple over the cranberry.

The next day's exciting part happened in the evening right after dinner.  Conker had been tied to the tree right beside our trailer but I put him inside since he didn't spazz out when I went to the other campsite right across the road if he were in there. 
Anyways, I was sitting beside the fire talking with some lady I'm not related to when I realized that the loud bark-like baying was coming from my campsite.  I looked over and saw something brown behind my great Aunt's car.  Someone's jacket on a chair I suspected. 

Then it moved.

It was a freakin bear.  A hugeass bear, so big that it was definitely over four feet tall on all fours.  And this hugeass bear was looking through the screen door at Conker who was going nuts barking his head off at it.  That bear was only a couple inches away from the trailer and was most likely interested in the chicken smell eminating from inside.
But some loud pesky thing was in the way, and I imagine Conker saved us a couple thousand dollars in damages and fines simply by being present.

I alerted everyone in the campsite that:  "It's going to eat my dog!  That frickin huge bear is going to eat my dog!"  I wasn't aware I said that but anyways...
All the men in the campground went charging across the road but stopped when the curious bear who had picked up some sort of cake dish that Mom forgot to toss in the bear-proof trash containers, stood his forepaws up on our flimsy table.  He was now about seven feet tall and that made everyone rethink their decision of charging said bear.

Then, thankfully, somebody found their keys and remotely set off the alarm on their truck the next campsite over and that startled the bear enough to start heading back to the forest.  All the guys re-charged and made a whole bunch of noise until the bear who had slammed into one of the poles of our tarp-thing and lost his cakepan ran off.  You could hear the other campers as he made the rounds banging on things and yelling until it got dark and I guess he moseyed off.

He is supposedly a well-known bear to the residents.

Conker was able to relax somewhat the next day.  I was going to go hiking with my sisters and a boyfriend of one of them but I was told that the trail was in a California State Park and dogs aren't allowed on the trails in those.  So I didn't bother getting up when they did early in the morning.  I didn't get curious as to if the trail actually was dog-friendly until after they'd left.  I pulled out my list of trails that allowed dogs and found out that the trail they went on did allow dogs.  I was ticked at myself for not checking sooner.

I did find a small dog park that Conker relaxed at while everyone else went mini-golfing.  It was probably only about 1/4th the size of GP's dog park but Conker still had fun running around after two resident dogs left. 



All in all the trip was fun, but activities with Conker were greatly lacking.  I was bummed out that the relatives weren't really open to us doing what we wanted during "scheduled" group activities that were often of no interest to any of my siblings or cousin.  This was also the first time beer was present at the Lake Tahoe gathering thing and thankfully nobody pestered us about it.
I learned a few funny things about my Dad that I didn't know so that was neat.

As per tradition we took a huge group photo which I will not be sharing and Conker was invited to be a part of.  Everyone really liked him and believe him to be a "calm" dog.  Not really, he was just in a completely new environment and had met about 12 new people in one day so it was a bit overwhelming for him.  He did end up warming up to a couple of them but didn't like the two young and rather spoiled fat kids (who I'm thankfully not related to) who kept pestering him to be pet.

The ride home was very uneventful.  Conker had phases of being nervous and panting then sleeping, like the ride out.  He did at one point crawl up into my younger brother's lap who had wanted to hold Conker on both rides and that made him happy.


The Girls were super happy to see me when I walked in through the back door. Sasha was so happy that she was whining, it was kinda sad but cute at the same time.  She's also had some de-progress pertaining to her diet and weight loss that I will write about later.