Bass Lake: Nature is Closer Than I Realized

Here's the thing: I live in the central valley, which I affectionately (rather, disdainly) refer to as "the armpit of California." Technically, the armpit of California is unofficially Bakersfield, but pretty much all of the central valley kind of sucks.

The one thing we have going for us is that we're close to the Sierra Nevadas, which includes the large Sequoia trees and also Yosemite National Park. The only way to get up there is going up the 41 N which passes directly through where I live. Consequently, along the way to Yosemite there are several notable places full of beauty and wilderness. One of them is Bass Lake, which is only a couple miles north of Oakhurst, which is about 45 minutes from Fresno on the 41 N (which turns into a little two-lane highway that winds through rocky foothills until the scenery explodes into tall, sweet-smelling pine trees as far as the eye can see). I had lived in Fresno for a year, lamenting the fact that I was so far from my beloved Cambria on the Central Coast, when I was completely overlooking the fact that there are a lot of beautiful places near where I live. I was acquainted with Bass Lake before, but it was awhile ago. We had the priviledge of staying in a rental house for a weekend - their are some really nice houses, but the prices can be *very* steep, especially in the summer. And since everyone from Fresno and the surrounding areas flock there during the hot summer months, rental places book up REALLY fast. You almost have to know someone who knows someone who has a place up there in order to get a stay during a decent time. The lake itself is not completely mindblowingly spectacular, but it's very clear and not too big. Plus, it's not as far as going up to Yosemite, and you don't have to pay money to get there. It's in the Sierra National Forest, but it's not a National Park so there's not the government enforced fee. Yay!
I decided today that I needed some nature in my life so I got some cash and some gas and headed up there. I looked up cafe's in Bass Lake (there isn't much since it's more like a village and vacation-home community than an actual town) and found Ducey's on the Lake, a resort on the lake that also has a restaurant open to the public. The lunch cafe was upstairs which afforded me spectactular views on the balcony. The weather was perfect. Observe:


^Notice the appearance of white sand on the beach. That obviously was carted in from some poor, unsuspecting beach in the Caribbean. Normal lakes have mud or dark, coarse sand beaches. They NEVER are this pristine. But notice the color of blue in the water! Like I said before, Bass Lake is usually very blue and clean. Probably because it's the more "ritzy" of the Sierra Lakes, as in, more rich people have houses there. I know this because I was driving on road 272 and there were IRON FENCES on some of the roads (hilariously placed between pine trees), indicating that only people with the right code and/or buzzer were allowed to even drive down the road. That's hardcore, people. I have never seen this in any other lake town..... I guess Bass Lake is the Beverly Hills of Sierra Nevada lakes and Shaver Lake (the one I've been too more often) is the everyman's vacation lake.... lol... and Millerton Lake is probably the ghetto...ahaha.

Anyway, I ordered clam chowder in a bread bowl and it was good. The menu was pretty standard lunch fare, though they did have a lot of different kinds of beer for a tiny place. I was tempted - it was such a calm, relaxing atmosphere. A beer would have been perfect. Alas, I am a lightweight and alcohol makes me tired. Plus, it was expensive. Though not as bad as those stupid chain restaurants that charge 8 bucks for a friggin martini! Gah!

I had brought along the goods for this nice, relaxing afternoon: a book and my computer so I could write. I love writing next to nature. This was perfect. The weather was fantastic, as I said before: the perfect temperature - 80's, sunny with a light breeze in a clean air environment. No smog. Absolutely fantastic. This needs to be the universal weather for the entire world. Everyone would get along. There would be no wars, I swear. ;-)

So I sat and ate and read The Catcher in the Rye. Don't laugh, I hadn't read it before. Am loving it by the way. The narrator is quite captivating. Holden is a dumb name though, sorry J.D. Salinger! I just want to add on something like "Holden A. Stick" or "Holden Myass" after it.... it's just ripe for all kinds of "Holding" jokes.... anyway, I asked the staff if they would mind me staying there for awhile while I took in the gorgeous scenery and wrote like an elitist person. They didn't mind. More points for Ducey's! Here's more pictures of my surroundings:




Both were views from where I was sitting. See that pristine sand? Yeah, no way it's natural. By the way, it was so tempting to go out in the water, but it was probably really cold. Melted snow no doubt. However, some people were sitting on that floating deck and it looked really nice. And actually, when I was sitting up on the second floor in the shade, it was kind of chilly when the wind blew, but when I tried to go down to the second floor and sit on the white tables, it was way too warm and sunny. I couldn't see my computer screen because of the glare. But I took some more pictures:


I wanted to get more pictures of the lake from different views, but since most of the lake front property is owned by rich people, I couldn't trespass on private property. So this was the best I got. It was a lovely afternoon though and I'll definitely go again, especially if the weather is so nice again. On the drive home, I had the best time because it was that time of day when the light is that perfect shade... where it makes everything glow like it's gold. I had to take a picture from my car:


Amber waves of grain indeed. Even the light at that hour makes that dry, fire-prone kindling look like a sea of gold.

The Act of Being Prolix: What the Hell, Another Travel Blog? Yeah, Like We Don't Have Enough of Those

It is a fact: travel writing is one of the most sought-after, but rarely realized, glamorous professions. Getting paid to travel to foreign and exotic places and then merely have to retell in detail all the great times you had in these places, thereby implying that everyone else's lives suck because they are not nearly as glamorous or awesome enough to get this kind of gig and instead have to resort to looking at those generic, "this is paradise" tropical island posters in their work cubicles with sad, mournful faces, not able to fully believe that such a place could exist, much less get paid to visit there? The overwhelming despondency accompanying such a realization would drive such a person to slit their wrists long before they even realize that the previous sentence was one fat run-on sentence.
The truth is, the fantasy of travel-writing hardly matches up to the reality. Most people have to pay for their own travels while maintaining a job that pays the bills (which are the modern, more numerous version equivalent of fascist dictators) and then after painstakingly sorting all their introspective, artistically driven photographs of "Buddha statue: cool" into folders sorted by day and location, will have to write up an exhausting recount of every stone touched and every temple visited, proofread it (loosely) and then send it off to a travel publication that gets a thousand of the same entries every day. Is it of little wonder, then, that most people stick to the posters and hoard the National Geographic novels instead?
With the age of the internet, photo sharing and social networking sites have made "amateur" travel writing more prominent, and where people feel inadequate when their verbose travelogues are refused for professional printing, they feel vindicated when they have the power to post all their soul-searching ramblings with a blog. And dear god... here's another one.
So why prolix? First of all, what the hell does it mean? Really, I just wanted a travel blog that was separate from my personal one. Where I could organize all my travel notes and hopefully finish the ones I started (ha! I'm hilarious sometimes). I had to come up with a great name, of course. A literary name. An original name. I'm very concerned about being original. I hate cliches, so there was NO WAY I could have the word "wanderlust" in the title (though I had to seriously restrain myself, really. "It fits me so well!" I would exclaim. "I'm a Sagittarius, for goodness sakes!" So, in my desperation, I even tried to run it through babelfish to see what it would be in German. It translated as "Wanderlust." It was like the English language was mocking me. LET ME USE MY CLICHES WHEN I WANT TO, GAWD).
So what I came to realize was, that in any real publication, travelogues are short and sweet, usually containing an asinine list to appeal to ADD readers, such as "Top 10 Bier Gardens in Munich!" or "10 tourist blunders to avoid!". Rarely are they in first person - they have to appeal to a wider demographic, so you're likely to not be able to go on in detail about hard-hitting issues like cultural taboos or social strife. Conciseness is key, and I've always found that I was not very good at being concise. Not unless I have to be. In all my professional writing, I have to mince words like it's the depression and words are rationed. I can do it, and my writing is nearly always better for it, but I don't like doing it. I like talking. It's fun.

BOOBS.

That was to see if you were still reading. Probably not, but hey, I have to check. So anyway, I simply went to www.rhymezone.com and looked up the antonym for concise and "prolix" was pretty much the only suitable result. Perfect. I slapped it on my blog name and we're good to go. So you won't find minced words. You may find yourself reading forever, but I guarantee it will be interesting. Or at least, opinionated. And in case normal words fail, SAYING THINGS IN CAPS NEVER FAILS TO DRAW ATTENTION. HAHA!

So sit back, relax, and take it all in. This is not Reader's Digest. This is Prolix, BITCHEZ.*


*I'm sorry, I try to speak rap sometimes. I hate most gangsta rap, except Tupac Shakur, whom I absolutely adore, like he's a cute wandering puppy. No really, I love him. Oh and Biggie. And Snoop sometimes. Ok, old school gangsta is cool. Like when they were really killing people and shit. The authentic stuff. Not wusses like 'fitty-cent'. Oh yeah. I went there.