Lake Hume and Golden Dreams – A Fool and His Gold…

Day 13 –

My plan for the day was to drive out to Lake Hume and do some more fishing. The drive to Lake Hume took about an hour and the scenery was as beautiful as expected with several nice places to pull out and view the mountains. I enjoy driving in the cool mountain mornings with the radio rolled down. When I approached the lake area I discovered that there is a large church camp resort and the place was crawling with kids. I admit, after seeing the area and all the cool things there were to do I would have loved to have spent time their as a kid myself. I passed the camp ground facilities and went towards the dam end of the lake.

I walked out into the cold water and spent several hours with a conventional rod and reel fishing with no luck. After that I had sandwich lunch and then got my fly gear from my truck and went down below the dam to fish the outlet water. I had a couple of nibbles and I could see a few small trout. But the highlight if my day was when I thought I found gold.

Standing in the water I looked down and realized I was standing on a small mound of sand the sparkled and was flecked with something extremely shiny and gold colored. Reaching down and picking up a small piece I thought “Hmmmm… there’s no way this could be gold.” I don’t really know how to test for gold, except that it is soft so I bit it, and when I did, it dented. It wasn’t in nugget form but was thin compressed sheets, this also bothered me but I figured, maybe its natural gold leaf. I pulled a small plastic box out of my vest and spent the next hour dreaming of riches as I sifted through the sand for the small pieces of gold colored material. I knew the chances of it being gold were unlikely, but this was the Sierra Nevada’s and much gold has been found here. I figured this outlet stream may contain some small deposits from the spring runoff. Since the fishing wasn’t all that good, and I was enjoying this more than fishing, I decided to gather up a good sized amount in case it really was, other wise I would be kicking myself for not getting as much as I could.

After I was good and tired of my lottery dreams, I hiked back to my truck, stopped in at the general store for gas and an ice cream bar, and drove back to camp. My trip to Lake Hume had taken the entire day, and I was ready for some RnR back at camp.

The couple I had talked to the night before had invited me for dinner this evening, but when I got back from my daytrip I found a note saying they had an early dinner and had to leave, so they left me some peaches and some pasta in my cooler. I ate that with some wine and spent the evening by the fire and reading from my book.