Travel with pets--into the lake--quick!!!

September 30, 7:33 AMLA Travel with Pets ExaminerPatricia Hughes

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There are SO many side trips from this point in the Sierras, but for a fun and relaxing time without a long drive, all you have to do is head the two miles down the hill to Highway 120, turn left (east), and within a hundred yards or so you reach the Ellery Lake campground. This is significant for a couple of reasons- it takes the overflow from the ever-popular and always filled Saddlebag camp, and it has a restroom open to the public.

As you continue past that turnoff, you come to the next driveway--quite wide and hard to miss, leading to---nowhere. It goes in a few yards and ends in rubble and ruts. But it does provide a place to leave your car while you take your picnic, your book, and your dogs down to a quiet bay that is a finger off the larger and busier main Ellery Lake. It's a good place to learn how to kayak, or read a book, or have a private picnic. People do drive in there, but normally they turn back around when they see nothing there is very exciting.

The dogs beg to differ. Here, unlike up the hill at Saddlebag, they aren't in danger of fishing lines or hooks, nor are they annoyances to the cranky fishermen. If the dogs are going to swim at Saddlebag it's best to take them across or partway around the lake.

At Ellery, they are fairly well contained, and the area is easy to police for abandoned hooks.

I took my dogs there on Tuesday, and on Wednesday my friends arrived and we went back there. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the powers that be decided to drain some of the lakes to prepare for the winter snow volume. This year they started early, and they picked on Ellery first. My dogs had a lovely blue bay to swim in on Tuesday, but by Wednesday it was becoming a mud bath. The dogs didn't mind.

However, by Thursday it was a sad sight indeed, and we had to find other places to go. Not a problem. But I did feel sorry for the fishermen who arrived at Ellery and were greeted by this.........

.....when just two dayspreviously it had looked like this!!!

Thursday we drove a little further--and had a wonderful day in a totally different atmosphere.
Ah, but that's another story!