Leaving Mendocino and At Goose Lake

The new house is mostly painted, with Tom returning in a couple of weeks to resume. Julie and Ruby were settled in as I prepared to leave—of course, Tom was leaving too, and the bear hit his trash cans overnight.  After gathering the trash which the bear had scattered, he searched for his ice chest (which had been empty), but it was long gone in the woods.  He took a couple of Styrofoam cases for fresh oysters that Scooter had wanted to take home.

 I was soon on the road toward the walnut ranch for my first rendezvous, and the little Roo pulled along as if it was not there.   Liz and I loaded it up with supplies on the following day (Thursday) and on Friday we headed to Laura’s for our second rendezvous.  We gassed up just before reaching her house, and Saturday morning, early, we hit the road toward Goose Lake, with Laura leading the way in her CRV. 

We went through the local roads to pick up Highway 80, heading toward Truckee, and managed to lose Laura twice at our exit,  as we went off on an early exit and Laura went off on the next one, then we tried to re-connect  through a couple of roundabouts, and it always ended up that we were going the opposite direction from Laura—Helen would say that the three Stooges were alive and well in the Roo, but we eventually coordinated our direction and headed toward our breakfast point in Sierraville.  We made a brief rest stop along the way, and spotted a large and beautiful red fox in a grassy field just as we were leaving the rest area to continue to Sierraville.

A gas station—the only one in town—was located just on the entry to Sierraville, so I filled up.  As it turns out, I probably could have made Hallelujah Junction, since my mileage up the Sierras dropped to about 7 mpg, but in the less steep area toward Sierraville, I often averaged 13 mpg.  Also, there was another gas station in the little town of Loyalton  just before Hallelujah Junction.

After refueling in Hallelujah Junction, plus buying propane, we continued on Hwy 395 north toward Alturas and the final rendezvous point of Goose Lake, where we were connecting with Erich in his camper along with Brad, Judy, and Emily in their camper.  We lunched at the old time burger place in Alturas (great!), looked for the Belligerent Duck sporting goods store (out of business—too bad, as I really wanted one of their T-shirts), and also re-fueled.  New Pine Creek and Goose Lake were only a short hop-and-a-skip away.

We rendezvoused with the others at the Goose Lake Campground, and then the three of us went in to Lakeview and purchased my Oregon fishing license.   The man who waited on me in the True Value Hardware Store was a look-a-like for my late cousin Russell, including his wispy white hair, genial smile, and gentle manner.  He found me in the Oregon fishing license computer, but had my old address, so he patiently updated all of the records, before selling me the license, a couple of containers of worms, and a bottle of floatant.  The hardware store has a little bit of everything, and everyone is friendly and helpful. That night, after a shared hot-dog dinner, our group went for a walk down to Goose Lake at [insert internet picture of Gooselake] sundown, and it was spectacular sunset.  The surrounding area was full of birdlife.  The campground is a very pretty place, and everyone enjoyed staying there.  I love the showers, plus water and electricity hookups along with a dump-station.

The next day was another departure day, and we had planned to leave early to head into the Fremont National Forest, but the day started out with a propane leak as my dual regulator apparently started leaking in the wee morning hours.  I smelled it immediately as I started to break camp.  The tanks are right under Liz’ cantilevered bed, and we were very lucky indeed that we did not have an explosion.

We quickly turned off the gas, and headed into Lakeville with the bad part to see what was available on a Sunday morning (it was 7:30 a.m.).  The first stop was at the gas station, but the two people working there had not a clue as to who might be open—recommending the Napa Auto Parts store, which opened at 10:00.  The TrueValue hardware store opened at 9:00, so we settled in to breakfast at the Dinner Bell Cafe, which featured home-made bread.  Our breakfast was delicious and leisurely, and by the time we got to the True Value hardware store, it was open.  The same Russell-look-alike helped  us find  a single regulator plus all of the connections.  Soon we were off back to Goose Lake.  In a jiffy, Laura had rigged the new propane setup   and we were on our way again.  Heading out N 4^th Street (aka “Splash Highway” as Goose Lake used to be so high as to nearly approach the road) toward the Thomas Creek road turnoff and our entryway into the Fremont National Forest.