Lyon Crossing and Sierra Heights

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April May2nd, 2004

Geocaching Adventure #7

A beautiful sunny day in Tuolumne county. We only did 2 geocaches today, but did a lot of other adventuring afterwards.

Lyon Crossing

The gate down to Lyons Reservoir just opened on May 1st, so we headed down to the lake on the 2 mile gravel road. We've only been down here once before, a shame since it's so close to the cabin and it's such a beautiful place. It's a 'no body contact' lake, but you can fish from the shore. It was very full and the overflow at the dam created amazing waterfalls.

I was a bit handicapped because 2 days before I went on an 8 mile hike and wore improper socks and got major blisters on my heel so I was wearing clogs. Jimmy had to do all of the searching, and while he was, encountered many angry ants. He easily found the cache, traded a mermaid for a skater dude. We walked around for a while and explored the area. The wildflowers and dogwood were blooming and amazing!

(click on image to view larger size)

Our Log:  May 2 by jretz (12 found) The gate just opened on May 1st, so we headed down to see the lake. It was full to the brim and one of the dam gates was open. Stunning and very loud! The dogwood trees were blooming and were so beautiful - there are a lot of them on the road down to the reservoir. With the gate open, the hike was less than 1/4 mile. We've been down here once before but this time of the year was amazing with the blooms and how full the lake was. There were lots of angry ants around the cache. Took the skater-dude and left a mermaid to swim in the lake.

SierraHeights

This was a virtual geocache at the Donnell Vista Point. We try to come here at least once a year because the view is so breathtaking, and this gave us another reason to visit, to log our find! There was only 1 other car there, but we had the point to ourselves. It's an easy 1/4 mile hike/stroll to the vista point, I think they try to make it wheelchair accessible. You can climb down a rocky path from the parking lot if you'd like, though. That path is quite a bit more challenging, especially going up in altitude, but since it's such a short hike, it's still fairly easy.

From the vista point, we saw Donnell lake. It was quite a bit lower than the other times we've gone to see it, maybe they've already emptied it partially? As always, it was quite hazy, breezy, but surprising not very cold, probably low-mid 60's. Also from the viewpoint, we could see the Dardanelles, volcanic peaks created 9 million years ago.