Tuesday, October 19, 2010

California: Lake Tahoe

Last weekend (October 8th - 10th - yikes I'm behind on posting!) my brother Chuck and a whole bunch of his friends (including our brother Joe) stayed in a cabin near Lake Tahoe.  My mooching on Chuck was quickly extended to mooching on the whole group! 

There were about twenty people total, which meant that there was lots of carpooling for the 4+ hour drive from San Fran.  Chuck had just acquired a "new" truck with an extended cab and a small back seat, and was determined to fill all six of the seat belts.  He succeeded, and we headed down the highway like a can of enthusiastic sardines.  Two days later on the return trip we were more like exhausted, slightly stinky, slightly smoked sardines. 

With that many people around, the cabin was pretty full and I opted to pitch a tent near our little lake.  Waking up early Saturday morning I caught a good view in the dawn light:



Saturday some folks went for a bike ride around Tahoe and the rest of us went hiking through the neighboring ski mountain and onto the Pacific Crest Trail.  We climbed around on the ski-lift equipment at the top (I forgot to take pictures) and then headed on to Mt. Anderson.  We had fantastic views into Desolation Wilderness and Lake Donner (as in Donner Pass, and the Donner Party). 


The rocks we hiked through were pretty awesome, too.  There was dusty, crumbly conglomerate rock, big volcanic chunks sticking up in a couple of places, and at the end, Mt. Anderson, which had a weird rocky top and avalanche-slopes of the same rock going up the side: 



On the way back to the cabin we ran across a bulldozer on the  ski mountain:

 

Let's zoom in on Joe's face so we can see exactly how much he loves bulldozers (this picture is for our nephew Charlie):


That night we had chili for dinner and a campfire, a guitar, two banjos, and a bunch of singers for entertainment.  All in all, a fantastic weekend.  I think the best part really was the group of people.  It's great to see such a big a group of friends who all know each other, some through work, some from college, some (like me) just there for a little while, all forming a real community and working together to have a great time and share their lives.

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