Sunday, April 10, 2011

A wet weekend at Santa Margarita Lake

Recently, we enjoyed a wet weekend of camping at Santa Margarita Lake. We had been invited by our Live Oak Music Festival camping buddies, but had no idea who was in this particular camping group. At the last minute, our camping buddies opted out (this trip would have followed on the heels of two miserable-weather camping trips), but we were already packed and planned and ready to go. So...off we went to camp with a group of people we'd never met. Or so I thought.

We arrived at camp late Friday night after E's special event. We were warmly greeted by the camp group's ringleader who, it turned out, we had met at Live Oak a couple of years ago. Saturday morning, we were warmly welcomed by many of the other group members, so many of whom looked ever so familiar. This was, after all, a SLO group, and though I haven't lived and/or worked there in more than a decade, faces stick with me pretty well (even when names don't). I felt right at home as we made connections and got to know each other.

Saturday provided us with plenty of damp. It drizzled all day long, but the rain fell so lightly and slowly at times that we were able to get in a nice hike around the west end of the reservoir to the dam view point. With the reservoir at 113% capacity, the spillway was booming as a river of overflow dumped to the riverbed below. Beautiful, fantastic, and great news for our area.

2 comments:

  1. So, what's the story of the giant hand-print/foot-print thing in the mud? Looks like something from a scary movie. Glad things turned out to be fun in spite of the rain!

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  2. The giant hand-print - we think it's some sort of prehistoric creature, or a giant mountain lion, holing up in the backcountry. NICE track, though! :)

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