the last of summer

Before the college year (and consequentially Matt's year) got in full swing we headed up to Donner Lake for one last hurrah of summer. This time we took Matt's grandma (better known to all her great grand children as GG) with us.

The big news of the weekend - Matt went out fishing at sunset on Friday night and caught 4 fish - his best catch of rainbow trout to date. He said he could have kept going, the fish were biting like crazy, but it got dark and he only had the light of his cell phone to tie knots with.

Hannah, GG and Pansy (GG's dog) also enjoyed put their feet in the water.

Since GG was willing to babysit Matt and I recreated one of his fondest childhood memories by climbing (note, that I do not say hiking - there was absolutely no path and for a lot of the time we were holding onto bushes and branches pulling ourselves up) the mountain up to this train bridge. We had a fabulous view of the lake but I'm pretty sure that once was enough for me. We got a little lost coming down and multiple times I actually was afraid we would need to be rescued.

To further illustrate the craziness of this hike - here's a picture from the west looking back at Donner Lake. I've labeled the train bridge on the right. I can't believe Matt talked me into doing that.