Yesterday, I decided that she had waited long enough for an answer and we pointed our car toward Eureka!
This old town is rich with history and the family was fascinated as we made our way through. A stop to appreciate its charm was warranted.
Porter Rockwell's cabin (a prominent local historical figure):
It's actually looking a bit better, these days. The last time I'd gone through there, I recalled more boarded-up windows and a "ghost town" kind of feel to it. If I had to guess, I'd say it's being revitalized in a few ways.
With that behind us, we watched the landscape around us transform as we zipped along the dirt road.
Soon enough, we arrived at the small and remote Cherry Creek Reservoir.
A cold spring surfaces only a short distance upstream, as well as a few within the reservoir, which is why these fish are able to survive the scorching summer temperatures that cook the region.
It had been several years since I last visited this water. In fact, it was the first fishing trip I took my Sentra on. As I had left them years ago, the wild rainbows still looked the same:
Tiny and beautiful! Here's what could be considered a "big" fish for Cherry Creek Res:
It's hard to find prettier rainbows though.
Cool place, especially since it's out in the desert.
The wind was a real bother most of the time and my family didn't have any luck with the fish, other than a bite on my wife's spinner that shook off before it was landed. Everyone agreed that it was time to go.
There was one pretty nice pool-up area right below the dam, where I was able to get a really good underwater HD video of the little fish swimming about. For scale of their size, the jig you'll see hopping around halfway through is a 1/16oz and far too big to get any action with.
Of course, I made a few other failed attempts at landing one of the incredibly skittish rainbows from the tiny creek, which is less than 2 feet across in most places.
Our next move was to cross another adventure off the list and visit a place that none of us had ever been to, the Little Sahara sand dunes. Off we went and left the dusty mountain trails behind us.
This decision was very popular with my daughter, who has always made it a point to request that we go somewhere with sand on our family trips.
That particular little girl got her wish paid in full, as well as future installments, on that particular day.
Never before have I seen such a sight! I've always wanted to see a seemingly endless ocean of sand and now we were all free to enjoy it.
Incredible.
The kids were in Paradise and ran their little legs off.
What a neat place! Even without ATV's, it was really cool to finally see something like that. Being only about 2hrs away, it's not too far to visit again sometime.
With historical stops, trout in the desert, and a mega-huge sandbox for the kids to play in, the day was a total success and we all went home, happy to have gone. What a day!
Happy Fishing, Humans.
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Nice rainbows. The vast exanse of sand looks like great fun for kids.
ReplyDeletePhenomenally! As for me, a mixture of the Wild West, African and true trout hunting. Just beautiful!
ReplyDeleteA really pretty area. I've got a book about Eureka. I thought it was a ghost town. Nice looking family by the way.
ReplyDeleteThat is a very nice bit about Cherry Creek. I started fishing that little gem in the desert when the nice lady that owned the liquor store in Eureka told me about it. I was helping with the major CERCLA clean up there in town.I would fly fish every evening after work. I kept going back with my float tube and pontoon boat, this was back in say 2004-2006, the beautiful wild rainbows were a lot bigger back than 13-14 inch trout were the norm, the largest my buddy caught was 17" not kidding! I haven't been there since probably 2008? By then the lake was filling up with algae plumes and the fish were beautiful but were rare and very small. I thought by now the lake would just be a bog. I think I will try it again, I really like to tent camp along the creek just below the damn. Oh during the day a wooly bugger or a Jakes hopper as an indicator followed by a pheasant tail or hares ear dropper was the ticket, in the evening sometimes there would be incredible baetis or caddis hatches. I hope it is still fishable.
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