Lake Success

I snapped these two photos last evening while walking down to the lake shore from our campsite in the Tule Campground at Lake Success. The upper photo is a pair of Western Grebes starting up their mating ritual.  The lower shows some White Pelicans surrounded by hundreds of Common Mergansers.

Yesterday afternoon we detoured off of Hwy 99 to Porterville. As we climbed the hills west of town toward Lake Success I was mentally composing in my head my blog post with a title of something like, "Success at Last".  Jeanette and I had been wanting to visit a list of Corps of Engineer Parks above the San Joaquin Valley for a number of years. It felt like yesterday afternoon we were finally getting to camp at one of these lakes.  The campground was beautifully landscaped with only a scattering of campers.  Sites included water and electricity and our cost with a Senior Card was only $15. But as the afternoon wore on into evening we were faced with a grim reality, no cell service.  It may be a sad commentary on our life, but the reality is we are dependent, perhaps even addicted to phone and Internet service.  No cell service means no calls, no one can call us, we can not call anyone.  It also means no Internet service which means no e-mail or Facebook, but more importantly it means no weather reports, no route planning or campground locating, and no blog posting. It was a pretty bleak evening, not a success at all.