I was chillin' in Murphys this weekend with the wife and we decided to head up Rt 4 and have a picnic at Lake Alpine. There was no snow in the area, except a few little globs in the trees near the parking lot. No mosquitoes to speak of. About a half-dozen people bank fishing with moderate success.
I couldn't resist making my way to the back of the spillway to check it out. On the south-west tip of the lake, there's a shuttered old lodge set up replete with boat-house. I wonder who owns this, and how they got it eased into national forest land? Fascinating. I counted literally 30 Private Property / No Tresspassing / etc signs around this lodge, so I suspect looky-loos are a problem. Not me - I just pretended I was a Jeep and followed the OHV road around it, then hiked up the drainage til I got to the spillway. I gotta get a rear locker & new set of AT tires on my Tacoma and and take it wheelin' up in these parts, it looks like awesome fun.
There were a few places where I could tell that folks had camp fires along this stream just below the spillway, and it looks like an excellent place to camp. Not that I'd ever do or condone that, of course -- I think you'd get tried for treason, much like accidentally passing a menacing glance at the Hetch Hetchy spillway, because it's a federal water supply or somesuch craziness.