Kern River: Meteor Shower, Camping, River Tubing, Cave, Hot Springs and Hiking

OK, I just found out that the Perseids Meteor Shower happening next Saturday is one of the best. Here's a description I found online: This is the most famous of all meteor showers. It never fails to provide an impressive display and, due to its summertime appearance, it tends to provide the majority of meteors seen by non-astronomy enthusiasts. The Moon is a thin crescent that rises about three hours before the Sun, so it will provide little interference. At the shower’s peak you might see a few dozen meteors per hour.

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COOOOL! So we gotta check it out.

I wanted to find a great place close by and fun to go watch it, and Amazingly enough there were 3 campsites available at Hospital Flat Campground 6.5 miles north of Kernville, right next to the Kern River. Perfect!

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I've been to that campground before. It's a great campground right next to the river. About 2.5 hours from L.A. At night we will be far enough from any city light that we will be able to see the meteor shower perfectly, and during the day we will be right next to the river so we can go swimming an tubing down the river. The water level is pretty low this year, and it's late in the season so I think it'll be perfect for tubing.

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We have the campground starting on Friday at 2PM, so if you want to get there on Friday and enjoy the day already, that's a great idea. That's why I put the start time at 9AM. I'll be getting there on Friday night, at around 10:30.

On Saturday we'll get up, have breakfast and go swimming and tubing down the Kern. Fun, fun, fun! If you plan on getting ther on Saturday, make sure you get there early, by the way, so you don't miss us.

We'll tube and swimm the whole day, and then later in the day we can choose to stay at the campground, or we can go to Remington Hot Springs and hang out until early evening.

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At night we'll have a pot luck dinner, hang out by the fire (if it's cold enough. If not we'll just put a lantern in the fire ring and pretent there is a fire ;-)), and later watch the meteor shower.

On Sunday we can do a hike to Packsdale Cave. It's a 5 mile moderately strenous hike that takes you to an awesome cave!

By the way, you will have to rent your own tube in Kernville. Or you can buy one. They have some online for 25 bucks. E Bay has actual truck inner tubes for 20 bucks. Order it quickly so it will get here in time for the trip. The E Bay store (Wet Mall) is in Kernville so it will for sure get here in time. You can call them to see if they rent live vests, since you DEFINITELY want to wear a life vest. They also sell a life vest for under 20 bucks.

For the cave, make sure to bring a flashlight. And if you are new to camping, please take a look at the Adventure-Us Car Camping List (http://files.meetup.com/1500491/Adventure-Us%20Car%20Camping%20List.pdf)

All right, I think that pretty much covers it.

See you there.

Let's have some fun!

Eduardo.