With A Flashlight And A Club

Welcome to Santee Lakes, about fifteen miles northeast of San Diego. As with the previous lake we stayed at, the "lakes" here are a series of man-made impoundments, seven of them in a row, in a nearly straight line stretching from south to north. The first five lakes are a day use park for the general public with the last two reserved for the RVers. When we checked in we received the usual brochure and list of rules but in addition to those there was a full sheet of instructions about how prevalent coyotes are in the area, how every year several of the campers' dogs and cats go missing and how you should never walk your dog at night without a flashlight and a club.

It's quite bucolic and for once we had some real shade at our site in TheWillow Loop:

Despite the Great California Drought, the first night we were here it poured the entire night, turning everything into a sea of mud. But not just mud...rather a wet goo of grit that stuck to everything and filled all those little crevices on the bottom of your sneakers. We had to leave the broom outside the door so we could get most of it off before coming back inside. Mary Ellen was particularly unhappy, reminding me of our agreement not to do any more "dirt camping." I assured her that I hadn't been aware of the lack of paved sites but will have to think of a better excuse for our next excursion into non-civilized camp sites. Mary Ellen seems to think it was going to be like those British safaris to Africa in the nineteenth century, with a line that never ends of local villagers carrying everything imaginable for their comfort. That wasn't camping, it was carrying Grosvenor Square into the middle of sub-Sahara Africa. But she has done an excellent job of adjusting and insists that since I'm doing all of the mechanical and RV stuff on the outside, that she should be responsible for all "housework" type work on the inside. I keep telling her it's an unfair balance with her getting stuck with too much but once she has made her mind up, that's pretty much it.

We bought a small Coleman Grill that uses the propane bottles the size of a large Gatorade. It works like a charm, it's easy to move and clean and the meals she has been preparing on it are, as usual, to die for. Brian came down to spend the weekend with us and two huge sirloin steaks, grilled to medium-rare perfection, came off the Coleman last night. We've also been sustaining ourselves with loads of fried chicken and cheeseburgers, again courtesy of our new toy. I don't think Mary Ellen could screw up a meal if she tried.

Signs like this are posted throughout the park describing the various birds and ducks to be found wintering over here. The fishing in the lakes is excellent. Brian and I made our first excursion last night and I ended up catching my first-ever largemouth bass. For most of my 63 years I've been a strictly saltwater guy; the bass I caught was miniscule compared to some of those caught around the area. You may be surprised to learn that Southern California is known in the fishing world as one of the hottest spots on earth to land huge bass - pretty good for an area that is essentially all desert. I met a guy who had a good day with three decent sized Rainbow Trout and who showed me a picture of himself holding up a ten pound trout he had caught the day before. His feat and my own success have inspired me to keep two outfits ready to go at all times, just in case we run across any other hot spots like this. I can't wait until the summer when we intend to be in the Rockies with all of those famous trout streams and hopefully without the mobs that regularly descend on any decent rivers in New Jersey.

Mr. Ten Pounder with today's catch