Friday May 5th 2017

Since today was forecast to be the last good weather day for the foreseeable future, I drove south to tour the south Lake Tahoe area. I got there by taking the highway from Reno to Carson City then US 50 over the mountains into the south Lake Tahoe area. It sounds like the long way around, but it was the quickest.

View of the lake looking north west from the car window.

Lake behind the trees. Picture taken through the car window. I like the cloud pattern.

View out the front window of the car of a mountain on the west side of the lake that I will be navigating around in a little while.

The scenery, when I could see it, was beautiful, but the area didn’t really impress me. It is a tourist area and worst yet, it is between seasons. The winter activities shut down last month and the summer activities don’t start up until Memorial day. Finding a place to park near the water proved difficult. The one public parking area I found had a ten dollar all day fee.

Lake from high on the side of a mountain.

Marker buoys waiting to moor all of the summer boats.

From the southern end of Lake Tahoe I returned north along the west side through the National Forest. Most of the facilities were still closed for the winter. The small parking areas at the trail heads were packed with cars. The mountains in this area on the west side of the lake meet the lake without any flat area for the road. Consequently, the road climbs and winds along the side of the mountains. North bound traffic hangs over the edge of the cliff with out any guard rails.

I needed both hands on the wheel but managed to catch a glimpse of the lake below a couple of times. Anytime there was a chance to stop it was already occupied by a car or two. I finally found a parking area back away from the lake that had space. That was probably because there was a fee to park in the lot. I saw the iron ranger collection box as I was leaving so I don’t know how much I should have paid for the five minutes I stopped. I feel a little guilty, but I wasn’t the only one. Actually, it was probably covered by my National Parks Annual Pass.

Like yesterday, to return to camp I followed the Truckee river to the town of Truckee on Interstate 80. Today there was a long traffic backup getting to the interstate. Road crews with a huge crane worked on clearing trees and rock slide areas from winter damage. In some ways the work with the crane was the most impressive man made thing I saw today.