My Exchange #14 - Camping in Los Angeles National Forest, Part One

This weekend I went camping to Los Angeles National Forest with four friends who are also exchange students in Long Beach, California. I have been in Long Beach for about 6 weeks now, and this was the first time I was going to explore some nature since I got here. I am used to the forests and the greenness in Finland (during summer, in winter everything looks like a black and white film) and I was so excited to finally get out of the city.

Even though we only spent about 20 hours in the forest I took hundreds of photos of the mountains, the trees and the squirrels so I decided to share this journey in two posts since I did not want to leave out anything.

We left Long beach around 5 pm and it took about two hours to drive up to the camping area where we were going to spend the night. By the time we got to our camping site it was already getting dark and we could not see much of the nature around us.

We decided to light the campfire and make some dinner, but that was a lot easier said than done! You see, we had not brought any firewood since we knew that you are not allowed to bring your own firewood into some of the national parks and thought that we could probably find some in the camping area. It turned out, however, that there was no such rule at this camping area and we should have brought our own firewood.

We did find a huge stem of a tree that someone had already tried to chop up, so we continued the work they had started with the only tool we had - a small leatherman. After a while we realized that this technique was not effective enough and decided to go ask the other campers if someone could lend us an axe, but the neighbors that were camping next to us were so incredibly friendly that they gave us half of their firewood instead! So we finally able to light our bonfire.

After eating dinner and chilling by the bonfire for a couple of hours we decided to go to bed since we wanted to have the energy to explore the area the next day. I had not been sleeping in a tent since I was in the military so it felt exiting and I did not at all mind laying on the hard ground.

In the morning I woke up to the beautiful view of a blue sky and mountains and I also saw an eagle flying high up in the sky. We had breakfast and washed ourselves in a small stream that was running down from the mountains. The water was so clean and refreshing!

After breakfast we packed our tent and got ready to leave to explore a waterfall we had seen marked on the map while driving to the camping area the day before. Before leaving I also took a picture of the bear proof trash containers, since the thought of having bears around was quite fascinating and also a little bit scary. There are bears in Finland as well, but I have never before seen a bear proof container so I am guessing that there are more bears here than in Finland. Not only because of the bear proof containers but also because the state animal of California is the grizzly bear.

We started driving towards the waterfall, named Spring Falls, but could not find it anywhere so we came to the conclusion that it probably only exists in spring when the snow is melting in the mountains. Instead we continued up the mountains and found a camping site named Crystal Lake Campground and we thought that a crystal lake did not sound to bad either, so we parked our car, grabbed our bathing suits and walked towards the lake.

On the way we saw a bush with beautiful yellow flowers that really stood out against all the beige and the green, a three with cool roots that one of my friends said she would definitely want to live in if she was a tiny animal and I also found a big pine cone. Or is it a pine cone? I thought it was huge but my other friend told me that there are pine cones that are at least 4 times bigger than that one in Sequoia National Park, which is situated a bit further north in California.

And oh, a SQUIRREL!

At last we arrived at the lovely Crystal Lake!

With beautiful clear turquoise water and a sandy shore, it looked exactly the way we had imagined it...

Wait what?

Was this Crystal Lake?! I had never before seen a lake with such a unfitting name... I wonder who came up with it. Or maybe the lake was crystal clear in spring when the snow was melting. Right now a better name for it would have been Dusky Pond.

We did not need to see the no swimming sign to realize that we did not want to go anywhere near the water!

So we continued our journey and found a stairway in the middle of the forest, it looked mysterious and ancient but I guess it had not been there for too long.

We walked up the lovely stairway while admiring the formation of the stones and how they popped out in the contrast of the rounded shapes in nature. I really enjoyed the greenness of the leaves, the interesting roots of the trees around me and...

...SQUIRREL!

And another one!

The forest seemed to be full of squirrels and that is no wonder since the forest was filled with acorns bigger than golf balls.

My friend decided he wanted to try to make a candle out of the resin from the pine cones so we stopped and gathered some. When I looked closer I noticed what a beautiful color it had, a mix of golden and amber. I could not resist picking up a small piece with my fingers and smelling it. The piece then got stuck to my nose, from where it fell into the viewfinder of my camera and got smooshed all over when I tried to wipe it away. Everything was sticky for a long while after so I learned a lesson, but with the stickiness also followed a wonderful fragrance of pine trees so it was okay. ^_^

While we were walking around in the forest I kept feeling the mountains calling for me and I really wanted to go higher up, somewhere where I could have a good view of the mountains and the valleys between them. We decided to go check out the nearby campground to see if we could find a small hiking route with a beautiful overlook of the surroundings.

Did we find a hiking route with a beautiful view? You can read all about that in part two

While you are waiting, feel free to have a look at my introductory post to get to know me better!

Thank you for reading!

mialinnea