White Pines Lake

I grew up at this lake. It’s not huge or real adventurous, but a great place to make some memories. Perfect for picnics, if you have kids or are looking for a short day trip. My 2 star review has nothing to do with the lake as a whole. It is for the rope swing that killed my vacation. My boyfriend landed on a tree stump/​branch sticking out of the water. You can imagine what a hole in the butt feels like, not to mention stitches there. We found out that two days prior, the same swing caused a puncture wound in the back of a kid.
We will be skipping the swing next time.

We were on the way up to Calaveras Big Trees State Park for camping, and wanted to stop somewhere along the way to fish and make lunch. Did a quick Google search and White Pines Lake seemed pretty ideal — just a few miles from the campsite and the pictures looked nice. Bear in mind this is for the 4^th of July weekend.
Parking was easy — perhaps it was still early in the day as later on the parking lot became full. I noticed there was another lot on the other side of the lake with plenty of parking, so drive around if you’re not able to find a spot.
I was actually expecting this place to be a little more secluded, with less families, but there was a decent amount of people ranging from young adults to families to just people wanting to fish. The place felt like a cross between your local city park and somewhere that’s more nature-​ry. Yes, I said nature-​ry.
It is a nice little lake (not huge) surrounded by tall trees. There’s a basketball court, volleyball court, and at least one playground structure. A number of picnic tables were available and some have BBQ pits. There is an area with a fairly large BBQ pit — if you have a bunch of food, that would be the place to cook it. You might even be able to get away with roasting a pig on there, assuming you had a way to prop the sucker up :)
We tried to fish briefly, but I’m not sure if this is the best place to catch fish. The water was rather shallow where we were, so we gave up rather quickly. We also didn’t know what the heck we were doing, so that was another reason we called it quits. When your lure gets stuck up in the trees, it’s time to go.
Overall, it’s a nice place to spend some time and White Pines Lake has something for everyone — scenery, fishing, picnicking, BBQ’ing, hiking, kayaking, playgrounds, small beach, etc. There’s even a logging museum. Not a bad place to check out on the way up to Big Trees.