Kernville and Lake Isabella

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It was sunny and warm, but still quite hazy when we left camp this morning, but as the day progressed the sky cleared up to a bright sun. We decided to go to the Lake Isabella area, and there were two different routes one could take. The one route went up over a high mountain pass, the other was about twice the mileage. I looked on a highly zoomed GPS display, and decided all the wiggles in the road on the short route were not worth it, and with the pass at over 6000 feet, I might as well be conservative and take the long route. It wasn't all that far anyway. This took us down to the outskirts of the fairly large community of Bakerfield, and back up the Kern River Valley to Lake Isabella. The road through this steep valley even was narrow and windy, and at places you had to be carefull the side mirror didn't scrape on the rocky face of the mountain.

Just before Lake Isabella we went into a neat place called Hobo Campground, where we'd been 8 or 9 years ago, and where there is a hot spring. But after driving a couple of miles in, the place was closed! So on we went, and drove past Lake Isabella to a little town called Kernville, where I had seen from the internet there was a museum showing the history of the area. It is difficult getting Doreen interested in something like this, but after draging her in there, she quite enjoyed it, and we spent quite a bit of time there. The pictures give you an idea of the place.

That's a still

After the museum, and walking about town for a bit, we set off to find a campsite for the night. We stopped in one Forrest Service campsite a little further up the Kern River for an hour or two, where I sat out in the sunshine and read for awhile, but then decided to move on to a campground called Camp 9 on the east side of Lake Isabella. The campground is nowhere near the lake, however, because the water level in the lake is so low.