Pine Mountain Lake Association — Local services in Sonora

This is a peaceful place to escape the Silicon Valley madness. There are 3 swimming beaches on the lake warm to swim mid May to mid September. The heated pool is open until the end of October. Groveland is home to the oldest West Coast saloon. 1 hour drive away are caverns with stalagmites to see. Moccasin Creek Fish Hatchery (15min drive) is our aquarium youngsters like to visit :) There are local farms. There's working train ride 30min away in Jamestown: Railtown 1897 State Historic Park/Museum. Yosemite snowboard area and the Badger Pass ski resort are both 1.5h drive away. Yosemite's Glacier Point & Tioga roads are turned into cross country ski courses each winter. If you have exotic hobbies like edible mushroom picking or bird watching- you will find the fabled king mushroom and the American Bold Eagle in the near by forests. Just to name a few animals I've seen here myself: coyotes, squirrels, wild turkeys, foxes, raccoons, heirs, deer, snakes (that are more afraid of you than you are afraid of them), frogs, eagles, hawks and condors, and even a tarantula on one occasion (it is not poisonous, but looks scary :), not to mention exotic Yosemite animals. Fishing, riding ATVs, kayaking, water-skiing, golfing, motor-biking, cycling, backpacking, bow shooting, meditating, you name it- you'll find a place for all that near by Groveland, and you won't feel like someone is staring at you (a deer maybe? :) Yosemite is 30 minutes drive away. I'd recommend you not just doing the ritual of getting stuck in 2 hour summer Yosemite Valley traffic just to take a picture for face-book bragging :) See Yosemite Valley in winter, or as the smartest of us do: in Fall or Spring- no crowds and you pretty much have the park to yourself. If you come in summer, take the Tioga road. You can see Half Dome at Tioga's Olmsted Point. Hike Yosemite meadows- hike gentle granite slopes, follow a creek to see wild trout and little waterfalls. Go all the way to Mono lake and swim in its salt water (make sure to wear swimming shoes as the bottom is rocky)- take a stroll in the Tufa garden and feel like you are on another planet for a minute. Plan your Yosemite trip smart in summer: Don't get to the park after 9am, unless you want to find out how much time it takes for a 1.5 mile of cars to get in. If you came at 8am go to the Glacier Point 1st. And as I mentioned go in fall ,when all the roads in Yosemite are open, and tourists are hard to find (unless you like heat, not finding parking, traffic, and restroom lines to the restrooms you don't want to be opening the doors of :) But don't worry, you can always turn around and leave Yosemite on "one of those days" to come back to Groveland for a swim, or to visit one of the 7 pizza restaurants in Groveland (I'm still mystified as to why Groveland is so huge on pizza :) or maybe to take your kids to one of the Pine Mountain lake playgrounds, or to spend some time with a fishing pole at the Fishermen's Cove, or to rent a boat or kayak, or to take the water taxi and swim on every single beach of PML, and grab some food at the cafe on the Marina. There are BBQ areas around the lake, but if you crave fancy cuisine, go the the Grill- that's the restaurant by the golf course. Stroll though the downtown and ask locals what special is happening- who knows you might witness the annual Groveland parade, or visit a treasure hunter's antiques sale, or find out that today is kids fly FREE day at the local airport, who knows?

Come to Groveland to rest, and rest well. And if you come here to surf the web or to watch the latest episodes, or a sister's 2nd wedding video, or something someone sent you, or to load up on stocks, or to marathon play in 3D, or to make sure the world sees your Yosemite Half Dome masterpiece ASAP, etc., you simply will NOT come back rested. PLEASE don't do this to yourself, there won't be anyone but yourself to blame for staring at pixels instead of...

Hands down one of the worst customer service encounters as a Buisness we have ever experienced. On a recent visit to this property for work , we are professional magicians & were hired by a company to perform at a property located here. Upon arrival were were informed of a gate charge which was unexpected especially since we had submitted our paperwork & DL to them as requested prior to arrival. Long story short we were charged 45 $ to park here for 3 hours to perform our show then leave. When asked the guests were also being charged this fee per vehicle per day & also had not been informed prior to arrival. Which seemed very strange & unprofessional.. we performed our show and left choosing to take it up with someone in charge of refunds the next few days

After speaking with two different people on the phone they basically informed us that yes they knew that we had been charged even though we had given all of the information for a day parking pass and they really didn't care. They intoned we should seek reimbursement from those who hired us. Let me restate that No one was informed of any of these charges , nor is there anywhere you can go to find this charge or tell you that you will be chatged online anywhere.

They say it is stated online , but to find or view the information on gate charges you would have to be a homeowner to have acess to this information...huh? Why as a vendor or obvious small Buisness (catering etc.) would we be charged to come onto a property for less than a day. They said We could try contacting people in the safety department . This association in so many words told us they didn't care we were charged as it was an Air BnB. So I asked the protocol for getting a day pass. They said it would have involved sending in info prior to arrival. Which we had done. They said it wasn't put through ,but they had our name at the gate? Is this not good enough for a refund? Also let's do some math, 10 people /vehicles visit an Air bnb as a gift from their company. 2 more vehicles/people come in for catering and to perform a show. So 12 people are charged 45$ that day. They made.$540 on one property just in access charges for that property. We were there 3 hours max. The other people were charged this every day they were there as guests. My biggest problem is the fact that you cannot find anything on their website or stated anywhere online no matter how much you Google search this particular gate charge parking pass whatever you want to call it .a temporary Pine Mountain Lake pass. What you can find are lots of reviews of people who are upset about this gate charge and it seems quite ridiculous especially for a small business to be charged. Even after hearing about a small business being charged for Access onto the property and knowing that we should have been issued a temporary day pass their attitude was we just don't care because it is an Airbnb on a private property. Kinda gross and poor way to make money if you ask us. Sketchy doesn't even cover it.. we kindly wanted to mention they did also gave us the generous option that if we wanted to have somebody else come pick us up at the gate with our entire magic show and drive us back up to the house that that was the only other option instead of being charged the gate fee. No thank you. Anyone else think this is just terrible...

We have a great time visiting Davids family here for the 4th of July. We stayed in the PMA Rv park and it was very clean. But using the dump station was crazy. We had to wait over 30 mins. For an attendent to come unlock the cap to hook up our hose. And the rules are a little on the strict side. There are codes to the bathrooms that change on the first of the month. And are different for men and womens. And since we arrived on the 30th. They could only give me Junes codes. I had to call back for julys codes for the rest of our trip. Just a little overboard on the rules. If people cant get to a toilet I wouldnt like to find out where they did go, while I was...