If ya can’t stand the heat…

After numerous days over 105 degrees, we needed to ‘get out of the kitchen’.

So we threw Tilly in the car and headed to Lake Tahoe. It was still warm outside there, but about 20 degrees cooler and that felt a little like heaven.

Of course – these views didn’t hurt either.

Just a little bit of snow left on the Sierra Nevada mountains. Enough to imagine how nice it would be to make a snow angel in this July California heat.

The smell of pine overtakes you. It’s a scent that just can’t be replicated. (sorry, car freshener trees.)

This was our third daytrip with Tilly. The first two trips she got sick with all the twists and turns. This time we didn’t feed her breakfast and gave her some motion sickness medicine and she ROCKED IT! From what we’ve read, a puppy’s inner ears aren’t fully developed until about a year old, so we are hoping she grows beyond the car sickness because we love to travel and want her to be a part of those journeys. Today gave us hope.

We drove to Truckee – which is the cutest town with so many shops and restaurants. Truckee is the northern part of Lake Tahoe. Then we drove over the northern tip (which is my favorite view of the lake) then down the Nevada side of the lake. At the southern end we stopped and ate at this cute burger joint. I could have skipped it all and just had their amazing handmade shake. Oh my word…..so good!

The vastness of this area is overwhelming when you pay attention. The enormity of everything. The immenseness of pine trees. The age-rounded boulders.

What an amazing part of the country and just a few hours from our front door. We feel immensely blessed to be living here and experiencing this part of America.

Tilly had a big day. She came nose to nose with another dog. She has not been that close to another animal except our cat, Haddie. We met a dog trainer who was walking some of her dobermans. Tilly has no concept of her size. She is very subservient to other dogs. (Which is the part I regret about her pandemic birth timing.) We talked to the breeder about how difficult it has been for all of us to find dog training classes that are open. Since we all keep our distance while walking, she doesn’t come into close contact with other humans or animals.

(if only you could see the side-eye she was giving this curious dog!)

Our current problem with Tilly is that it appears she is a…(google title)…subservient urinator. UGH! She ‘shows her deference’ to others by immediately peeing. It’s a definite problem! She’s so curious about other people. She isn’t aggressive and doesn’t cower. But as soon as someone pets her, she lets it all go. Unfortunately, I’ve read this isn’t something they necessarily grow out of. We have some serious socializing to do with this one!

What a beautiful day. It was a thrill to not burn up in the intense heat but rather enjoy the gorgeous colors of a stunningly beautiful part of the country.

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Just a Whole Lotta Lake Tahoe

Fall in Northern California is something special. I am unapologetic about photographing every leaf around Lake Tahoe…

When will I tire of standing on a hill and looking down to the bottom of the lake??

We were a little disappointed the day was so overcast. The white clouds gave a cast to the lake that took away its brilliant blue hue.

You can see every pebble on the bottom.

As Hannah and I ooo’d and ahh’d, I realized Scott was no longer with us. I started looking around and found this curious site…

He found a treasure. 🙂

There are a few years between these two pictures, but the look-what-I-found enthusiasm is just the same!

After spending some time around the northern part of the lake (my favorite spot), we drove along the edge – along MANY winding, hairpin curves – to the southern part of the lake. Emerald Bay is a big touristy spot so there are always lots of people around. We lucked out that there weren’t as many as when we were here in August.

(Did I mention it was a really windy day?!)

We stopped to walk on a beach front off the lake. It’s hard to beat beach sand, clear water and mountains in the distance.

Autumn in northern California is a thing of beauty and contrast.

There was a kid’s playground we had a little fun with too…

Hannah and I walked a beautiful trail from the beach over to a dock area for some more pictures of the lake. It’s hard to stop finding new vistas and new jaw-dropping views.

I mostly try to wait and take pictures of the scenery without cars in the way. But sometimes it’s good to see the vast size difference between ‘regular life’ and nature.

The nearby wildfires were also evident. As the sun set, the hazy smoke in the sky became more and more apparent.

Another day of magnificent granite rock and pine trees unbelievably tall and so long you can hardly bend back far enough to see it all. The aspens were making a spectacular show of things too!

The drive was picture perfect. We couldn’t have asked for a better day of brilliant color, cool temperatures and memory-making views.

A Viewmaster Vacation

As a kid I remember my grandmother had the coolest Viewmaster with slides and slides of beautiful scenery and landscape. I would click and click through each slide with my eyes pressed firmly against the back – wondering where these magical places existed and how soon I could get there to see them in person. Maybe this is where my wanderlust soul took route.

As we drove closer and closer to Lake Tahoe, we kept remarking how unreal our surroundings looked. Unreal as in not real. They were like a scene from a movie or…a slide on a Viewmaster reel. And in so many ways, we kept running across a 50’s-style infomercial for traveling across America.

In my last post I mentioned we stayed in Carnelian Bay (the northwestern part of Lake Tahoe). On our first day we traveled over to Nevada, down the east side of the lake as far as Hwy 50. We stopped a million times and took pictures and walked around the various points on the east side (the Nevada side) of the lake. I don’t know if it was the lack of people or the lack of commercial/touristy areas, but this was my favorite area of Lake Tahoe. On the next day we traveled along the western side of the lake – down to the state line on the other side. (On the map below I marked our territory from star to star.) Again, each day included a million stops for pictures and walking (I refuse to say ‘hiking’. I’m not worthy.) We took our time and enjoyed each leg of the journey, feeling completely unrushed.

We started our day with some coffee and breakfast at The Dam Cafe.

There was only a little bit of snow left on the Sierra Nevada Mountains to see from the winter. This past winter was especially rough. Our daily news (in Sacramento) talked about it on the nightly news and the Tahoe locals we encountered this week were eager to talk about how rough it was. Fortunately, it filled the basins with enough water to take our area out of the drought stage and (…how they figure this is beyond my limited brain capacity…) – they say there is now enough water in reserve to support northern California for three years if it never rained again.

Lake Tahoe is biking, biking, biking everywhere. And when people aren’t biking, they’re golfing. Many routes. Many courses.

Driving was sometimes a little tense. The edges of the road dropped over to plummeting basins and valleys below.

There were also plenty of extreme curves in the road. Scott was a trooper. (Especially for someone who is NOT a fan of heights!)

Curves. Drop-offs. And plenty of steering-wheel gripping. 🙂

We get our share of snow in the Midwest. But to see the poles along the sides of the road that are flags for snow plowers to use as guides to where the end of the street is…well that’s a WHOLE lot of snowfall!

We saw a lot of ground squirrels, but no bears. Which I was a little disappointed about. (Although I would completely freeze and be eaten alive. So there’s that.)

We climbed these rocks to see the view from the top. It was fun (and I TOTALLY felt like Jeremy Collins) until the lizards appeared near my hands on the rocks. Then I was ready for the security of my passenger seat and the car’s air-conditioning. -ha!

6’3″ Scott looked like an ant next to the Lake Tahoe landscape.

We didn’t see a lot of it, but occasionally there were acres of burned trees among the incalculable amount of tall, straight, pine trees around the lake’s edge.

I couldn’t get over the amount of packed-in pine trees. And all so perfectly straight and tall!

(There were other beautiful things too…)

And everywhere – hills to be climbed. Pelaton spin class bicycles had nothing on Lake Tahoe!

We thought we’d found a geode….

 

#geodefail

We stopped at a cute roadside garden center along our way. I bought some nasturtium while Scott was off videoing the trees for sale vs the natural trees all around.

 

We also visited Olympic Village in Squaw Valley – home of the 1960 Winter Olympics.

The town at the foot of the ski runs looked like a European village. I can just imagine it in the winter snow!

A decision we might not make again was our verrrrrrrrrrrry backroads trip to see a waterfall in Fallen Leaf Park. The gravel road was too narrow for two cars so everyone had to take turns pulling off to the side of the road when an approaching car came toward you on the other side. Most of the road was unpaved.

But there were some cool houses tucked inside the forests. Houses that looked like they were begging writers to come seclude themselves there and write an award-winning novel.

It doesn’t look like much in the pictures but if you can find the people walking along the granite edges, you can get a better perspective of the size.

It took us about an hour to get to the waterfall. I’m glad we saw it, but the trip there and back was……rough.

Before leaving Lake Tahoe and heading home, we stopped at Camp Richardson.

It looked like an area frozen in time. Everyone on bicycles. Kids running in and out of the general store, slamming the screened door behind them as they bought candy bars then raced on to their next adventure.

Nearby, campers were set up in the grove of the trees. Camper doors open for the coming and going of family members as they spread out to find awaiting adventures.

It was an amazing few days away. We returned home feeling like we had just traveled three states away – not just an hour and a half. We are already anxious to return soon. Come visit us and we will take you to our favorite Lake Tahoe spots.

Because now…we’re old pros!

sea level: 7000+ ft

We had the crazy idea to travel the breadth of California this week.

We live in the middle of the state. On Sunday we drove 1 hour and 31 minutes to San Francisco (sea level: 0 ft) on the far west side of the state, then on Tuesday we drove 1 hour and 53 minutes to Lake Tahoe (sea level: 7,000 ft) on the far east side of the state. It was a fabulous choice of ‘themes’ for this week of vacation. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous scenery going in both directions.

There is absolutely no way to do any of it justice. And yet, I have multiple blog posts with an excess of pictures trying to at least give some idea. Feel free to blow through them quickly (or blow them off entirely.) I get it…looking at family vacation slides has never been high on anyone’s list. 😉

A co-worker of Scott’s told him we must eat breakfast at Smokey’s Kitchen in Truckee, California. So we got up early and made our way to the cute town of Truckee. This is a town we will definitely revisit – to shop at the shops and also to attend their big Thursday night farmers market/flea market event they host down the center street of town.

I love jadeite!

Obviously I took this picture through a shop window, but we really liked this wood etching showing the differing depths of Lake Tahoe. Very clever idea.

In every town – we find a coffeeshop and a bookstore. *all the heart eyes*

And since we are at Donner’s Pass – how about having a little fun with it at their expense, huh?!

(Actually, many things are named after the Donner Party in this region. But as far as I can understand the situation, this was a party of pioneers that took ‘a new route they’d heard about’, got lost, waited 4 months for help to arrive and noshed on the members that didn’t make it. None of that sounds worth of name-memorializing to me. *shoulder shrug*)

We stayed in Carnelian Bay on the northwest corner of Lake Tahoe. Homes were gently tucked into forests and forests of pine trees. Our Airbnb was a log cabin-type home that had a separate section/entrance for guests. We slept with the windows open and woke up to the sun peeking through the pines that filled our room with Christmas tree aroma. It was delicious! (This was our morning view out our window…)

You will never, ever convince me that the bottom of Lake Tahoe is not painted blue and turquoise – like a backyard swimming pool. The color…….. I’m not even going to try to adequately describe it. It is simply magnificent. Every marketing material photo I’ve seen of Lake Tahoe makes me assume there was some photoshopping done to it. That’s cool. It’s the way things are done. But everywhere we looked, all we saw was ‘photoshopped’ reality. It’s a place you must see to believe.

so. many. pine. trees!

The water is unbelievably clear. In some of these pictures you can see the rocks at the bottom of the lake. The camera didn’t capture just how far out you could see to the bottom. The turquoise shores turned into a dark blue center, the deeper it got.

Scott took some video…

We spent significant time along the northeastern shoreline. Personally, I think it was my favorite spot to see the lake. Most people talk about Emerald Bay (below) at the south end of the lake – and while it was beautiful, there were SO. MANY. PEOPLE. crowding around, taking pictures, etc, it was less enjoyable. We were practically on our own up north.

If you squint your eyes and use your imagination, you can see the Vikingsholm Castle on the island, built in 1928 after Lora Knight purchased the island for $250,000. Two hundred workers were hired to hand hew the timber, carve intricate designs, and for the interior walls they hand planned the wood. Much of the materials used (such as the timber and granite rock) came from the Tahoe Basin. There are sections of the Vikingsholm Castle that contain no nails, pegs, or spikes. The castle was heated with six fireplaces – all in a Scandinavian style.

Let me get this straight –  your own island in the middle of a beautiful lake and acres and acres of pines, in a castle with giant fireplaces and decorated in Scandinavian style??! Am I awake? Is this heaven? Please don’t wake me.

Later that evening we were lucky to catch the sun setting as we walked around Tahoe City after dinner. It was an amazing memory.

We quickly ran out of ways to say, ‘That’s SO amazing!’ As always, I am happy we were experiencing this beauty together.

(more about our trip in the final post: A Viewmaster Vacation)

Semi-Stay-Vacation

Scott took a week of vacation this month and instead of packing it with the many activities we’ve done on vacations so far this year, we decided to have a more ‘quiet’ vacation week this time.

We decided to travel the breadth of Northern California. We live in the middle of this area, so we are spending a day on the west coast side, coming home, regrouping, then spending a couple of days exploring around Lake Tahoe on the east side – completely new territory for us! We’re very excited to make our Trial Run trip to Tahoe. It will be our first pancake. Our trial-and-error adventure so that next time, we’ll be even more prepared to know what to do and what not to do. We’re staying at an Airbnb in Carnelian Bay at the northwestern edge of the lake. I can’t wait to share it with you all!

But for today, some Pacific Ocean wandering along the Bay then over to Berkeley to reconnect with our hippie vibe. We love hanging out in Berkeley! I have a quick hook-up with an online friend in Oakland and then we’ll head back home – undoubtedly filled with more information about the Bay Area then what we’ve learned so far. In our other trips into San Francisco we’ve concentrated on all the touristy things to see. This time we hope to hit some more out-of-the-way places to experience the area in a whole different way.

It will be a fun adventure together. No pressures. No timelines. Just plenty of pictures and plenty of reconnection. We’ve needed the time together and are looking forward to being away from all the normal routines for rebooting and revamping our ways of communication and connection.

I hope you’ll enjoy discovering things along with us! Many more pictures to come, I’m sure…