Lake Tahoe, CA

This is Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe
This ia a 10 MPH curve on highway 89 on the way to South Lake Tahoe. It was interesting with the motorhome and trailer but fun with the Miata.
Salmon at Taylor Creek.
The drive around Lake Tahoe.
This was such a pretty area.



11.1.07

Sorry we haven’t blogged lately. We have been at campgrounds with tall trees so our satellite can’t get out and they don’t have Internet. We’re at a computer store now where we are using their connection. Today we drove around Lake Tahoe. It is very pretty. The Panama Canal is 700’ wide and 50’ deep. Lake Tahoe could fill a canal that big if it was all the way around the earth plus another one like it from San Francisco to New York.

Wow, November is here already. Yesterday was Kim’s dad’s (Maurice’s) b-day. We called him and wished him a happy day. The months seem to be speeding by. Yesterday we drove 90 miles from Grass Valley to Lake Tahoe. Kim and I are thinking this may be the prettiest place we’ve seen and we haven’t been all the way around the lake yet. Coming here on 89 south we came along the top of a mountain. We were driving on the mountain ridge and looking down both sides was just beautiful. Lake Tahoe is the third largest lake in the USA and it is 600 feet deep. The water in Lake Tahoe would cover all of California with 14 inches of water. I think we are at 6400 feet elevation. Yesterday when we left Grass Valley we reduced the air in the air mattresses to 20 pounds and when we got here they had 100 pounds of air pressure. Potato chips in a bag are blown up and pressurized because of the altitude.

Another symptom of higher altitude (besides getting tired sooner when walking) is that it is colder here. Yesterday wasn’t bad but this morning the furnace is running. I often get up at 3 or 4 AM and write the blog because that is when I think best. This morning at 3 I heard the furnace running. We set the heat pump to heat but when the temps get 35 – 40 degrees it is no longer efficient and automatically switches over to the LP gas furnaces. The only downside of this is that I have to pay for the gas myself where the heat pump runs off the campgrounds electricity and doesn’t cost me any money. We have 2 space heaters at home we used last winter in Indiana. They also are powered off the campground’s electricity. We may buy one today. LP isn’t that expensive but sometimes it is a hassle to get to a place we can get the rig up to the LP fill. When it is this cold I also open a sink faucet to a very slow trickle so the supply hose doesn’t freeze.

Yesterday afternoon we took a drive in the car and stopped by Taylor Creek. This is an interesting stop that would have been easy to miss. The man at the info center had just bought a larger RV and pickup to pull it as he will be retiring next spring and will be traveling more. There is a nature walk behind the info center and there we saw hundreds if not thousands of salmon. Taylor creek is one of the 63 contributing waterways to Lake Tahoe. Interestingly enough, Lake Tahoe only has one exit for water. That exit is rare in that the water that leaves the lake on it never reaches the ocean. Therefore they believe the salmon got here by the ocean at a time when there was a waterway open to the ocean. The salmon are totally fresh water salmon and are locked into this water system. There is a walkway along the stream where we viewed the salmon and also there is an underground observatory where they built a glass sided room beside the creek. The windows are about 5 feet tall and about 40 feet wide. From there we watched the salmon. It is a really unique opportunity to see the fish up close. We also learned that grasslands like those in the Taylor Creek area are a natural water filter that keeps Lake Tahoe clean. They say you can see 63 feet down in the lake.

10.29.07
We got the new air mattress for our coach Monday and installed it. It took an hour to put it together and get it ready – and then we couldn’t find the TV remote control. After searching 15 minutes, we opened the air mattress and it was in there. We have no idea how it got there. We found a good Chinese restaurant called Wonderful three a few days ago and went back tonight. We had a good talk with David, the owner’s son. He said he works there 12 hours a day, six days a week and on his off day he goes to Sacramento for supplies for the restaurant. He said he really enjoys working there. His parents are Chinese but came from Vietnam 25 or so years ago.