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more of our ramblings, don't forget there is always the delete button!
Becoming 60 in Lake Tahoe
For no good reason apart from looking at various websites, it would appear that we both had similar impressions of Lake Tahoe, we expected a holiday destination both winter and summer but we weren't prepared for how much it has been spoilt. We are right on the California / Nevada border, in fact if we walk out of our hotel, we are in California but if we take 2 paces to the right, we are in Nevada. The two states obviously have different planning laws and though the California side is not pretty, they are all low rise buildings that they have tried to make fit in with the surroundings, however, the Nevada side are huge ugly hotels, towers of dark glass or grey concrete, truly awful. Of course they are casinos so lots of dosh involved but quite a shock when we first saw them. We went into one, as always a dark place so that you have no idea of the time of day, but full of people and full of cigarette smoke, horrible.
We knew we were near the lake but you can be easily fooled with distances here and you need a car to go anywhere and very few bits of the lake are accessible at the southern resort area where we are and most accommodation is, which is surprising again as we thought it would be lined with hotels, bars and restaurants but not the case.
Anyway, our hotel was good, very comfortable. All the rooms seemed to be suites with sitting room, dining area, bathroom and bedroom with a huge bed, another couple of people could get in and we wouldn't notice, not that we were keen on that idea!
29th April
We had decided on an easy day, a walk near the lake as the sun was shining a bit of retail and a couple of craft/fabric shops for Sal. Col had a good book on the go so stayed in the car and Sal had a good look round with loads of really friendly people in the shop 'loving' the accent! The choice of fabric and patterns is way beyond anything at home, boring as hell for some, bliss for
Sal. Car cleaning was also on the agenda after the mud of Bodie, they actually said they would have to charge us a couple of $ extra because it was in such a state! The hotel was set around two huge atriums, so you walked along balconies to get from a-b. They advertised a launderette which was up on the top one with a great view and everyone walking past as we arranged our not so smalls!
30th April
The big day!
Sal is a pensioner
We can think of worse places to celebrate the big day! Our plans had to change when we woke up to snow and really cold wind. So it was a chill out day, we had supplies of wine from Napa and posh yummy chocs from Susan in SF so pretty good all in all. Modern technology is great when you can receive lots of lovely birthday wishes by email, Facebook and FaceTime - thanks all for messages, face times etc, looking forward to opening my cards and gifts when we get home. Had a lovely day!
1st May
What a difference a day makes, lovely sunshine, a bit chilly but it warmed up beautifully through the day. We set off to drive all the way around the lake, it would take under 2 hours if you kept going, we took about 8! As we already said, we were less than impressed with the main south area where the hotels are but the rest of the lake is fabulous. Early on in our trip, we drove up a few hairpins for a great view down to Emerald Bay where you can see the only tiny island in the lake, it once had a small tea house used by a lady in 19th century who lived nearby in a castle she had built for herself. The last part of the drive to the view made us twitch a bit as the narrow road had a shear drop on
both sides and it was just as though a few barrows of Tarmac had been thrown down the middle, hold your breath time. The season hasn't started here yet so coffee stops were few and far between, we found a general store that did coffee, the young girl
Bonanza
Ponderosa Ranch was at Tahoeserving was hobbling around on crutches, Col looked at her and said 'accident or stupidity' oh god thought Sal, this could be a permanent way of life for this poor girl.... Anyway, it was stupidity, she had fallen off her stilettos! Another of her regular customers in the store said let me guess your accent, so waiting for him to say Australian which most think we are, he decides German ?. The drive was beautiful and most of the views picture postcard. The west and north side of the lake are mostly residential with multi million $ homes, we saw one in an estate agent window for $39m. They have deep snow through the winter and tourists through the summer, not sure which is more painful!
The old TV series Bonanza was partly filmed in the area and there was a theme park here until quite recently, but the land is so valuable, it looks like it has been sold for development. We stopped for lunch in a great bar/restaurant, fortunately, only ordered one sandwich between us as it was enormous. We drove on stopping at the prettiest beaches just enjoying the peace and quiet and splendid
views, simply breathtaking in places.
2nd May
That was our longest stopover of 4 nights done so on the road to Redding today. It was coincidence that our travel agent had put a one night stop in at Redding as Sal has a client from here who regularly comes to London with one of her off spring or siblings so it was going to be interesting to come to their home. We had options of routes and decided to give the more difficult but more picturesque routes a miss for the faster interstate as we had arranged to meet them at 2pm. This brought us through Sacramento and again past fields and fields of fruit and nut trees, oranges, plums, pears, peaches, walnuts, olives, almonds and then acres of paddy fields, not sure what they call them here but large rice processing plants, not what you might expect for California but the state is the largest exporter of rice in the world, of course China and India produce more but exporter is the operative word.
Illuminated signs on the freeway came on saying it was closed because of a 'wreck' further up and
sure enough we slowly drew to a halt. All traffic was being taken off the freeway and taken through the smallish town of Red Bluff and there was no alternative route that didn't take 100's of miles so we just had to stick with it, we eventually arrived at Tracie and family 3 hours late 😞. They own a gun store which was certainly going to be a different experience for us and we were stunned at the size of the place and the enormous range of goods and styles of guns for sale, many hand made by Marshall, Tracie's husband. Some we could hardly lift off the counter they were so heavy. There were trophy heads around the shop which wasn't our thing at all but interesting to hear their take on the gun laws and funny that as soon as there is any talk of restricting gun ownership in US, their sales shoot up, it seems the way they are tackling it at the moment is restricting ammunition availability though they reckon that will just create a bigger black market. They have a classroom where they run classes which you have to take to get a licence and
offer training as well. We found it really interesting and appreciated the opportunity to get a tour of the shop, talk to people and ask any questions.
3 of their 4 offspring (the other away at college) all made us very welcome at their home next door, Sarah, Tracie's sister came over as well. Sal had met them all in London on various occasions. They cooked steaks and pork on the bbq and took us on a tour of the various fruit and veg plants and trees in their garden together with their 2 enormous tortoises, they were huge and could move fairly quickly. Like home you can't buy these anymore as they are endangered but these 2 are 20+ years old and fascinating to watch, they quite like their leathery neck to be rubbed, found them fascinating! Tracie and Sarah are expert quilters so showed us some of their excellent work. It was great to sit around the table with them, conversations going in all directions and plenty of friendly, fun banter. When we left, Tracie gave us a bag of delicious home made cookies, Marshall asked us to hold on whilst he went back to
the shop and gave us what he thought would be useful to us, pepper spray with a demo of how to use it! We have come away from people's homes with gifts before but that has to be the best, at least it wasn't a gun, even though we don't think he would have thought that an odd gift at all !!
3rd May
We stayed locally and returned next morning for a local tour which included a great quilting store, of course and a walk over the beautiful Sundial Bridge in Redding to the gardens which were attractive and colourful considering the drought everywhere in California.
Early afternoon we went to Shasta Lake and Dam and then drove on to Mount Shasta for the next couple of nights.
Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano and remained hidden from us for most of the time. It last erupted about 200 years ago. When we arrived it was covered in cloud and looked like it was snowing, we had a look around the small town which had a Thai restaurant which is unusual to find outside of the city and
certainly an out of the way town like this but it was popular, we just got in on time before it filled up. Food was really good, it was still light when we left, we checked Mount Shasta which was still hiding from us.
4th May
Next day, it was pouring with rain, so ironic that just an hour or so down the road in Redding, they hardly ever see rain yet here has loads and there was plenty of it today. We took a drive out to Dunsmuir which is a "picturesque" town, didn't really fill the criteria in our books but you could see some of the older buildings which would have made it attractive because if their age but unfortunately, many of the business had failed and the buildings looked quite sad. We had a coffee in a great games cafe, you could meet up with your mates, sit at one of the big tables and play a game of Cluedo or something which looked like fun, though we guess after a few games you would have had enough and God knows what else you do to pass your time in this town
and many others like it. The railway went through, there was a passenger service that took forever to go north to Portland in Oregon or south to Los Angeles but it was mostly freight that came through and we watched a train go through pulling 60+ carriages of assorted shapes and sizes, he sounded his horn/siren whatever you call it - made us jump!
The town of Mount Shasta is small with small shops, many of them selling crystals and that type of thing, some of the people around looked like they had been left over from the hippie period and some younger ones came to join them. At last, late afternoon, Mount Shasta decided to reveal herself and we drove up a through the thick pine forest to get a better view.
5th May
As we left the hotel, the clouds clear completely so that we could see the mountain properly, 10 minutes later, the clouds had descended again and it was probably lost for the day. Our next destination was a shortish distance away at Klamath Falls. The first town we came to was Weed, pretty little place with several buildings
that looked left over from 1950s, very retro, and the town was doing a roaring trade in t shirts that said I ❤️Weed. Just outside town was an unusual war vets memorial, it was a sculpture park, a quiet, wild, lonely place, sculptures all telling a story, that make you stop and think. The area is rough grassland and each sculpture set apart separately but set in the ground now and then is a memorial to an individual.
Almost on the border as California becomes Oregon, there is a town called Dorris, as Sal's mum was Doris we thought we should pay a visit, sadly another town that has seen better days, everything seemed closed, dwellings were shabby surrounded by the junk described before and one street we turned into gave us an instant feeling of not being a good place to be and as we passed the Sheriff doing a slow drive by, we decided to go.
We carried on and drove along the border of California and Oregon to the Lava Beds National Monument which would be better described as a park as it covers some 46,000 acres. We drove past huge
natural lakes full of wildfowl eventually coming to Tulelake which again, was a sad place, very run down town, most buildings closed up and empty.
The Lava Beds National Monument is geologically outstanding because of its great variety of "textbook" volcanic formations, including lava tube caves, fumaroles, cinder cones, spatter cones, pit craters, lava flows, volcanic fields and various other volcanic things we had never heard of and didn't understand. The road goes through the black craggy lava and is very quiet and quite eerie. This time of year is quiet but it is particularly known for its lava tube caves, some of which are open to the public and popular to visit but not for us.
Returning to Tulelake, we happened to swap drivers beside a memorial to Japanese people who mostly held US citizenship and were imprisoned here in what they then called concentration camps later called segregation camps from 1942-46 holding up to 120,000. We could see the buildings in the distance and it is now a National Historic Monument. Court cases went on for years after the closure of the camp to restore citizenship to many.
Pelicans
- we love a Pelican and usually fail miserably to see any! In Australia a few years ago, setting off from a town, we mentioned that we would love to see some Pelicans, no problem they said, go to Someplace Town, walk about half a mile and there are hundreds of them, there are lookouts so you can sit and watch and photograph them. We did this, found the lookouts, not one pelican, we waited and waited, it was blisteringly hot.... Nothing. A few days later we recounted this to someone and he said there was a town that we would be driving through where there was always loads of them, on the water, in the park and on the quayside. What did we see, one, on top of a tall lamppost, he must have been the most photographed pelican in Australia! Anyway, driving to our destination, Sal spotted loads of them on a sort of canal and in a field, a quick couple of U turns and we were in position for 'Pelican Photographs' but we weren't fast enough, they were off, it wasn't as though we were that close but they were having none of it, so, if
anybody knows of a market for photographs of a large pod of pelican's arses disappearing into the distance, we can help!
We got to Klamath Falls just before the heavens opened and it poured down - we were in Oregon, how California would like this rain ! Rain = bottle of wine in the bar 😊
6th May
The reason for staying here was to visit Crater Lake. It is a caldera formed when the volcano Mount Mazama blew 7000+ years forming this deep lake which is famed for its water clarity and deep blue...... Or so they tell us as we couldn't see it! The drive from Klamath was lovely, the weather was beautiful and we thought it was perfect for our drive around the lake though we then read a bit more info and discovered not all of the rim was open because of snow, on a day like this we thought can't have snow problems..... Wrong! Winter here is from October to the end of May! As we started the climb, more and more snow was on the ground getting deeper and deeper, all the roads off the main road
had about 10 foot of snow, they don't bother clearing them all winter so only ever open for 2 months maximum each year. We got to the visitor centre where a path had been cut through the white stuff which was up past our heads. We then discovered the whole thing was shut, the weather was so bad today, not even the normal winter route was open, we drove up as far as we could and yep, they were right, zilch!
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Jane
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What a way to celebrate being 60
Bottle of wine and some choccies sounds like the perfect way to celebrate 60. Lovely to see the fabulous blue lakes / sky - not so sure about the wall of snow and the white out behind Col.