Eagle Lake (travels in Cookie pt. 2)

Eagle Lake is one of my favorite places in what I have seen of the world. I used to go with an ex’s family once a year and I always looked forward to it. I had not been back in over 15 years and I was very excited to go back. I booked us a partial hook up spot at Merrill Campground - I went for the partial vs the full hook up because that would allow us to be closer to the lake.

We drove from Chester towards Susanville, then took a left just before dropping into Susanville and headed over the hill into Eagle Lake. As we drove in it started to rain, then hail. We had seen the clouds as we were driving and expected something, but not what we actually got - hail the size of peas!! It hailed on us all the way down the hill and to our campsite. We drove very slowly as the amount of hail made the road like it was covered in ice, but we made it safely down.

We found our site easily and got set up; the clouds cleared and it warmed up a bit, so we took the bikes out for a brief ride before it got too dark - the skies were beautiful with the coloring of the storm and the clouds. I took a couple of photos, then we headed back to get some dinner prepped.

We spent our first day at Eagle Lake trying to fish. We didn’t have a boat, so that meant riding the bikes around the lake to a point on the Eastern side suggested by our camp hosts. Van and Anthony tried their luck, but had no results. We found we were most entertained by the birds on the water going through beautiful courtship rituals - standing on their legs and fluttering quickly across the water in pairs. It was stunning.

We started playing Uno and keeping points with a running total; I kicked their butts, lol. Each of them rallied at one time but they never got close enough to catch me and then we stopped playing. Anthony and I played a couple of games of War again, with him usually winning those. We rode the bikes about twice a day - the paved bike path is great and it’s very pretty as it skirts the lake. We also had enough cell coverage to watch a little TV - we picked Reservation Dogs on Hulu, something that seemed to offer interest for all three of us. We would binge two to three episodes at a time which was fun.

We spent Sunday through Thursday morning at Eagle Lake. We had rain almost every afternoon, sometimes heavy, sometimes just a little. The worst part of the whole trip was when the motor home started to smell. We thought for sure something was wrong with the black tank (the one that holds the sewage). We would be sitting outside relaxing and waves of smell would come by; we were parked near the bathrooms, so we also considered that they might be the source. I spent a lot of time Googling this and trying to find remedies. It came and went; we unhooked everything and went to the dump station at one point and things did improve but then came back. It was awful.

We left fairly early on Thursday morning to head to Lake Siskiyou and the family reunion there. It was on this part of the drive that we discovered the true culprit. We had dumped our tanks again and rinsed them thoroughly and yet, as we headed down the road, we could smell it. It was at this point we realized it was the house batteries - they were overcharging and the horrible rotten smell was them. From that point on we kept them disconnected except when needed (which is really only when you’re not hooked up and/or you need to run the generator or start the engine) and the smell was gone. Whew.

I’ll close with our time at Lake Siskiyou in part three.