The Maiden Voyage: Blue Oak Campground, Lake County, CA

Our efforts to find a good weekend escape out of cell service range led an adventure to Blue Oak Campground. It's quiet, off the beaten path, and it was an easy choice for our maiden voyage with our FWC. It's situated on BLM land, free to use, and each of the six sites have a picnic table and a fire pit. It's off a well-maintained dirt road that's about 8 miles from Highway 20, and if you continue down the dirt road for another 1-2 miles, you'll reach the Indian Valley Reservoir and the remnants of a once popular campground. Unfortunately, the drought dropped water levels of the reservoir so significantly that the campground closed a couple of years ago, but good news! We discovered on our trip here in early June that the campground is open and accessible again, even though resources there are limited.

The area can be full of dirtbikers and skeet shooters if the weather is nice, but there's great hiking and some really pretty views if you climb up the foothills.

    

We took our FWC out in early June for a quick overnight, and it was a wonderful trip. Setup upon arrival took approximately 3 minutes, and I got a fire going and downed probably three smores within the first hour of being there. 

 Lucy ran around like a maniac as we got firewood, and she was out cold early in the evening.

That light-up collar is our only hope of seeing this dog at night

It was disgustingly hot by 9AM the next morning, so we headed down to the newly-opened Indian Valley Reservoir to stand in the water and let Lucy swim. It was completely deserted, so we're tempted to try camping at the reservoir ourselves if it stays that way.

She will swim after sticks in the water for days

You can see the water line is still below what it should be, but at least it's high enough where the boat ramp is useable again!

And shortly thereafter, we loaded up a wet but tired pooch and were on our way back home. A quick trip but a great refresher nonetheless.