vacation day 4

Working Title: “Leaving Lake Tahoe”

Check-out day. We packed, scrubbed everything in the rental to the peak of its (sometimes quite low) ability to come clean, and loaded out for a last stop at the Dam Cafe for morning coffee. We’d identified the Dogs Just Wanna Have Fun cache as an ideal target so we figured it’d be a quick find and we’d hit the road.

The spot indicated, Bristlecone Beach, had prominent “NO DOGS” signs around the parking area but oddly enough a pick-up-bag dispenser and several other owners/pups running around across a small bridge, so we figured it was only on the left side of the beach that the dire warnings applied.

I found the cache without too much difficulty, we signed the log and… stayed. Everyone was having a good time in the gorgeous morning sunlight and we really had no pressing deadlines to get back home, except my strong desire to miss the Bay Area rush hour afternoon traffic. So we stayed, swam, relaxed, and some even crafted a backstory for the flotsam.

This posture, incidentally, is one of the things I love dearly about my kid. When G is really intent on some rocks/sand/surf/bugs he’ll hunker down on his heels and focus on it to the exclusion of all else. I feel a huge sense of relief that my kid, who I worry spends too much time on specifically-targeted age-appropriate digital edutainment like PBS Kids and Ruff Ruffman, retains a deep love and appreciation for poking at dirt with a stick.

We did eventually head out. Jen did the bulk of the driving down through the Sierras. I finally (after six years) convinced her to try out the Tiptronic shifting on the Audi to save the brakes on the way down and we had some fun making early- and late-apex turns through light traffic down Hwy 80.

We switched off driving for the last hundred miles, and I knew we were back in the Bay Area when I saw a “THIS IS SHARKS TERRITORY” bumper sticker and the traffic slowed to a crawl. It was just a little five-car crackup on the Sunol Grade though. We did indeed beat the rush hour home… so it was back into the South Bay Blast Furnace — 33ºC outside at 4PM — after almost exactly four hours of driving.

In summary:

The Good

• Not working = very nice.
• The Lake itself is amazing. I’d never been there before and didn’t really understand why everyone seems so willing to endure hours of traffic and (what I perceive to be) less than wonderful snow conditions in winter.
• Swimming alongside your dog is one of life’s underappreciated pleasures.
• the North side of Lake Tahoe is definitely more my speed than the Vegas-ized South. Well, “Reno-ized”, perhaps — “Vegas” implies a grandeur of scale SLT lacks.
• Hiking up there is what hiking ought to be. A few minutes out and human inflictions on the environment disappear completely from view.

The Bad

• The area’s just not set up for road biking. Mountain bikes are ubiquitous in Tahoe for a reason: the roads suck for riding because they’re narrow, pitted from winter and heavily-trafficked, but the trail network is huge, well maintained, and unbelievably beautiful.
• Our rental was crummier than we expected and less “fully stocked” than we’d been led to believe. I do think vacation rentals are the way to go so you have a real kitchen and save money and irritation from having to eat out, but next time, we’ll bring more household stuff (our own food, spices, and good knives).
• Gunnar really needs to HTFU while we’re hiking. I don’t know how to inculcate that but the volume and intensity of his whining/complaining on a pretty mild hike saddened me.
• The area is very dog friendly but it’d be nice to have a place where Laswell could hang out while we did something else. The rental company’s paranoid/uptight Dog Rules (there were no less than four printed copies in the unit) made the problem worse, but fundamentally he needs some place to hang out without us that won’t be stressful.

A ten year anniversary is a pretty rare thing when you think about it. I couldn’t picture a better way to spend mine. I love you Jen.