Sawmill Lake, CA
The water is so calm and nice offering great reflections for photo's
Sawmill lake is a “classic” camping spot for me, it has a long history in my life. My first solo 4×4 camping trip with my now deceased friend Preston was to this lake. Countless early 20′s camping trips and best of all my daughter was conceived there.
Our trip up the mountain wasn’t as eventful this time, though it was my sons first time to this place and we did do some testing and photo stuff. The weather has been awesome here lately so heading up to 6500 feet I knew it’d be just right for us.
Bowman road has some great views along the way.
Sawmill lake is a fairly small lake positioned above the popular Bowman lake and just below a small lake named Faucherie. It’s around 20 miles north of the Interstate 80 and highway 20 intersection which is 60 miles west of Reno, Nevada and 70 miles east of Sacramento, California. Of course, you can follow the Google map below to check it out for yourself.
There’s many reasons to love this lake, from the water fall on the south side to all of the dead trees to paddle through. I also don’t mind the picturesque mountain tops surrounding it, and the Grouse Ridge trail to walk up them and take a look.
The remnants of great trees half submerged along the north shore of the lake make a great trip for paddling
Due to a wet spring season there was plenty of water spilling over the spill way on the dam. It's a pretty sight to see.
Of course, the fire pits in the camp sites are great for roasting marsh mellows and making sm'ores
The new edgestar 12 volt fridge ran flawlessly
We did give the new 12 volt fridge a test on this run. Look out for the write up on that when I get my laptop back in a couple days here. I will say it’s a great piece of equipment and it’s amazing to be able to have cold food with no ice bath.
The end of the trip came a bit too soon, a couple of days to explore isn’t nearly enough. The next time we come back, I hope to have a boat to take the kids to see the cool treasures that they missed out on this time. It’s my hope that they will grow to love this place like I do, and hopefully it will be just the same for them when they bring their kids here.
