Ben on a rock at Shaver Lake

After a night of refreshing at home: laundry, restocking and love and care of our menagerie of cat, toad, tortoise and fish and a thorough cleaning of the mini van and Suburban we headed out for a four hour drive to the Sierra National Forest at Shaver Lake and the highly recommended Camp Edison (map).

We arrived around 5:30 p.m.  grabbed a bite to eat in Shaver Lake and headed to our great pull through site at Camp Edison.  The site was close to a bathroom and shower building.  You can buy a shower card from Camp Edison, 40 minutes for $5.  We found we could not use this whole card, even taking a nice hot shower every night after a day on the lake.   Highly recommend; just get it when you arrive.

On Wednesday, Claire rented a pontoon boat for the afternoon which was capable of towing an inner tube and she took the kids out for four hours of fun on the lake.  Kids can fish without a fishing license, so both the kids opted to try this and we bought them each a self casting children’s fishing rod and kit.  Though they didn’t catch anything they did enjoy trying.

Kids fishing at Shaver

Camp Edison has daily activities for kids and even art and photography lessons that people can sign up for.  We had the kids do all the activities we could including a storytime and an animal track plaster of paris art project. Samantha and Claire went Shaver Stables to go for Samantha’s first horseback ride.  We highly recommend doing that, she had a great time and did very well on the docile and well cared horse named Tombstone!

Claire and Samantha found out if they wanted to go out canoeing they needed to do it either early in the morning before 9 am or after 5 pm when all the boats seemed to exit the lake.  Then is was calm enough to easily navigate the lake and check out the coves.  They visited the Museum of the Sierras which has a lot of children’s activities books and coloring books that can keep kids busy while the adults visit.  They also visited the National Forest Service Campground of Dorabelle Campground at Dorabelle Cove to check out the sites.  If we ever are not able to get into Camp Edison, Dorabelle Campground would be the alternative.  There are other campgrounds further north of the lake but Dorabelle is right on the water and has beautiful picnic options that overlook the lake.