Morning Hike

I heated up some more premade quesadillas and a breakfast burrito for breakfast. We started packing up our site. There was a lot to pack up. After we spent about an hour packing, Theodore was getting tired. We figured it was the only time we’d have today to do a quick hike on the shore as he could sleep in the carrier and it wasn’t so hot yet.

One can hike around the whole lake. We only made it a small way around counter-clockwise. The trail goes right along the shore and it goes up and down a lot as there are a lot of rock formations near the water. We saw a group of people fishing in the water. The old guy fishing told Lizy a joke as we were walking by. I don’t remember the joke, but it was funny enough for Lizy to laugh.

We actually had already hiked around the entire lake when we came to Pinecrest Lake around six years ago. Lizy didn’t really remember doing the hike, but I did for some reason. It’s amazing how quickly memories fade away, until they’re just feelings. I’m glad I’m writing this blog, so at least I’ll have a record of our more recent trips. But there’s always a lot of things I leave out. The trimmings of the trip, so to speak. Maybe it’s fine if those things are forgotten, but if I’m honest, something about forgetting seems sad to me.

Finishing Up Packing

We got back to the site just as Theo was waking up in the Artie Pop. We packed for another thirty minutes, but it became clear we wouldn’t be able to completely pack by checkout time. So what I did was I drove to the office. I checked out. Then I drove back to the beach through the public access road and parked across the street from our site in the public parking for the beach. Now we just had to beat the next group of people coming to the site.

Lizy took Theodore to the beach and I finished the packing on my own. It was getting hot by now and I was heavily sweating while packing. The lack of shade on our site was finally affecting me. It ended up taking another 1.5 hours to pack everything up into the car. Again, I had to stuff the cargo box like crazy and near the end I wasn’t sure if I could fit everything, but I found a way.

At The Beach

After I finished packing, I joined Lizy and Theodore at the beach. No one had stolen our sun shade. We saw the family from the previous day that no longer left their stuff at the beach. On seeing that no one stole our sun shade, she said, “Maybe there’s hope for the Pinecrest community after all.”

Our part of the beach was much busier than it was the previous day, mostly due to a Girl Scout camp that had congregated in our area. There was also a couple that Lizy thought looked like a Barbie couple because the man had perfectly coiffed hair and the wife had comically large breast implants. Their daughter seemed sort of melancholic about her family situation. She dressed in all black in what appeared to us a rebellion against the materialism of her parents.

Just to the right of us on the beach was an extended family group playing a Frisbee game where they took turns trying to throw a Frisbee into a beer bottle so it would fall off a pole. A grandfather finally had a good throw, but before he could celebrate, the beer bottle hit his young grandson in the face.

The kid started crying to his mother, “Mommy, Grandpa hit me in the face with the beer bottle!”

Lizy hadn’t seen the whole incident and didn’t even know about the game, so she got a little freaked out that we were sitting next to an abusive grandfather that flung beer bottles at people. I could see it in her eyes that she was nervous. I let her know that it was all part of a game, so she could relax.

One of the mothers of the group had a novelty T-shirt that had a picture of a stamp. The stamp had a picture of the Gulf of Mexico, had the title “Gulf of America,” and the postscript “Wish you were here.”

You wouldn’t see a shirt like that back in the Bay Area.

Lunch

We walked to the snack shack again for lunch. I ate some of the leftover quesadillas from the cooler and Lizy bought a burger and fries. We sat to eat our lunch on a picnic bench in the shade.

We sat with an older couple that talked to us a little. They lamented the new owners of the Pinecrest campground. They thought things had changed for the worse. They were mostly upset that all the walk-in sites had been converted to reserve-only sites, but they had other complaints too. They said they had been coming to Pinecrest for sixty years.

For dessert we got ice creams from the snack shack. I got a selfie of Lizy and me, but I accidentally got ice cream in Lizy’s hair in the process.

The Holy Ghost Is With Me

Lizy hadn’t drunk a Diet Coke I had brought for her, so I decided to take it back to the car to exchange it for cold drinks. When I got to the car, there was a man pulling a wagon with his beach stuff back to his truck, parked beside my car. He left the wagon right in front of the Kia’s trunk. At the same time, I put the Diet Coke on the roof of the car so I could open the trunk to get to the cooler, but when I opened the trunk, the Diet Coke fell off. It hit the ground and exploded with the bulk of the liquid soaking the stuff in the wagon.

The guy looked pretty upset. Completely understandably since I had just splashed all his stuff with Diet Coke. I apologized profusely. I felt terrible. After collecting himself, he turned to me and said, “It’s the way it is. Don’t worry, I got the Holy Ghost with me.”

One Last Swim

We took Theodore out into the water one last time. He loved it as always. Then we packed our beach stuff into the car and headed home.

Taco Tuesday

On the way home I saw a billboard for $1.50 tacos on Tuesday at La Estrella Tacos & Seafood. It was Tuesday. Based on the billboard, I thought the deal was too good to pass up, so I went there for dinner. I got four tacos for six dollars. What a deal! Lizy got a fried shrimp plate for $32 and a $9 drink, so we evened out. I feel like the tacos tasted extra good because of what a good deal it was.

Sitting at the table next to us was a group of friends that seemed to be bringing a seasoned level of efficiency to the Taco Tuesday deal. They had split up tasks among the group and certain people were buying tacos and some people were getting salsas from the salsa bar. I asked them if they had been here before. They said they came every week for Taco Tuesday.

“It’s just such tremendous value,” one of them said.

Coffee Shop Stop

We stopped one more time on the way home at a coffee shop called Grounded - Coffee and Local Delights. They were closing up for the day and the cash register was already closed, but the mother running the shop was nice enough to let Lizy use the bathroom. She doted on Theodore and reminisced about when her own kids were so little. Since the register was closed, we couldn’t buy anything, but since she could see we were haggard from the long drive, she gave us free lemonades. What a nice woman. We will definitely be back.

Conclusion

It was an amazing first camping trip with Theodore. I’m already planning on booking another trip to Pinecrest when the sites open up for the next season.