Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

T is for Tahoe

We had an incredible time at Lake Tahoe. Once again, we are indebted to our generous hosts for memories that will last a lifetime.

We left Saturday morning rather than Friday night because Rachel, having lost a day at school by being out sick, felt she would be unable to get her work done and get out early enough to beat some of the traffic. Our new plan was to pack the car Friday night and be out the door at 5am Saturday. I got to bed at 2am and set the alarm for 4am.

I flew out of bed at 6am in a panic. I hit the shower running and threw the last minute stuff in the car. I filled my coffee cup and Thermos; the coffeemaker had been set to fire at 4:30am. We grabbed the kids and loaded them and hit the road just about an hour after I woke up. The timing worked to our advantage, though, as the traffic was virtually non-existant. We weren't completely alone, but we were consistently moving at or above the posted limits. We made the trip in about three hours

Saturday afternoon and evening, we played in the snow by the house. We made a snowman, albeit a pretty pathetic one. In our defense, however, it was a first for all of us. We also slid down the hill next to the house, even my mother-in-law.

Sunday was mostly a day of rest. We just hung out around the house and enjoyed the view of the lake. When the kids went down for their naps, Rachel and I took off to pick up some snow pants for us. We had plenty for the kids and her folks had gotten some, but we were looking at jeans -- a poor choice for cold, wet environments. We zipped up to Truckee where we found what we were looking for at, ironically, Long's Drugs. Man I miss that discount! We also found out that the toy and train store we liked was closing down. We stopped in and got Jared a shirt and I got an aluminum poker chip case.

Monday, we headed over to Carson City, the Nevada state capitol. Our first stop was the Northern Nevada Children's Museum. Jared always has a blast there. Being President's day, Abe Lincoln was there, but Jared is yet a little young to understand what a great man and president he was, let alone what a president is at all. Still, he ran around, playing with trains, balls, the grocery store, and just about everything else.

It was there, alas, that we got our next bit of bad news on this trip -- the restaurant we had planned to go to, the Sierra Glen Restaurant and Tahoe Creamery, was closed. We drove past and sure enough the sign indicated the location was for lease. While we were there, Rachel's folks walked over to the Nevada state museum, a couple of blocks south. They enjoyed that as well. I haven't been in many years, but I remember it to be extremely interesting.

After that, we split up; we wanted to stop at CostCo to purchase supplies for our hosts. While we were there, Rachel found a couple of outfits for the kids and I got a battery-less flashlight for Jared; he tends to leave them on and one that can be recharged simply by squeezing the grip seemed like a good idea. I resisted the urge to get the chips to stock the new case, but I did pick up a couple of books of historical tales of the Tahoe area.

Tuesday, my in-laws went to South Shore (and were unimpressed, to say the least) while we headed for our favorite snow spot. It's a little meadow next to highway 267, a little less than a mile south of Northstar, on the same side. If you walk away from the freeway, there's a big iron gate (it was mostly buried on Tuesday) that leads to a nice hill for sledding, with room for snowfights or making snowmen. Jared and I slid down a bunch of times from near the top, then he went down (from much closer to the bottom) on his own -- as I ran alongside like a lunatic. Jared had a blast, of course.

Tuesday night saw yet another bit of bad news. Windows decided to take a powder on my laptop. It locked up and when I rebooted it, DOS came up saying it couldn't boot windows without VMM32.vxd. What's scary is that MS-DOS no longer showed the long filenames. What's up with that? The promising part was that the directory structure -- including my data directories -- was still there. I'll have to pull the hard drive, stick it in an external USB case, and see what I can salvage.

Wednesday was the day we left, a bit sad, but also busy as we packed everything up, tried to keep Jared from unpacking everything, cleaned the house, and loaded the cars. We were on our way by mid-morning and at the outlets in Vacaville by early afternoon. We had some lunch, did some shopping, and made it home for dinner.

[ Posted: 12:00 | home | print ]

Excepting the "bad" parts it sounds like a great little trip. I am disturbed by one thing, though. You made your <i>first</i> snowman? Ever? How can this be!

Posted by dugh

First

Yep, my first snowman. Keep in mind that I grew up in San Francisco and was about 16 before I ever saw real snow. I've only encountered it maybe a dozen times since. It was actually a phenomenal trip. We had such a grand time and Jared will remember it his whole life, I'm sure.

Posted by Uncle Roger

Just wanted to add that your daughter Sara had fun, too. She experienced the snow for the first time. She enjoyed tasting the white snow. We watched out for the yellow snow. :>

Posted by Auntie Rae