The water levels in the lakes around Lakeview are substantially higher this year than last year when we traveled through here in early September. Goose Lake, just south of Lakeview was nearly bone dry last year. Now it is a good sized body of water.
Just after leaving Lakeview we encountered our first woodchuck. The little guy ran out on the highway a bit ahead of us and luckily decided not to stop and have a look at whatever it was (us) bearing down on it. It scampered across the road into the ditch just as we went by. We didn't have time to determine if it saw it's shadow or not.
Entering California we had to go through an agricultural inspection station. After a few questions about numerous types of fruit and vegetables, of which we had none, we were sent on our merry way. We followed the familiar highway 395 south to Alturas then veered west on 299 then south on 139 through the Modoc National Forest to Susanville where we stopped for the night. The arrival in Susanville, from the north, features a 7 mile 6-7% downhill grade along the edge of a mountain with cool views across the valley.
At the RV Park in Susanville, there was one couple who apparently decided they could not leave any toys at home. They had a huge RV with a rack on the back holding a large BMW motorcycle and two segways. Under the rack was the hook up for their jeep which also had a rack holding two more cycles....
On the other hand, having the wee trailer sometimes means we have only the small swimming pool.. :-)
Leaving Susanville we joined the relatively heavy traffic heading south on 395 towards Reno. Not wanting to go through Reno we cut west on secondary highway 70 to Chilcoot (which we found a bit funny since we drive a Chilkoot model Nissan) where we turned south on highway 49 into the high country (5000+ ft elevation) semi arid terrain. It made us think that this is the real Sierra Madre buried treasure kind of country. The real nice thing about the secondary highways is the lack of traffic. Very nice... Continuing south after we hit highway 89 the terrain changed and we entered the Tahoe National Forest for a spectacularly beautiful drive all the way to the Lake Tahoe area hitting elevations over 7100 ft along the way.
Our drive went through Truckee where the main street is like a miniature Banff with some cool little stores and restaurants. Nice place to stop for a rest. South of Truckee we followed around the west side of Lake Tahoe. This is a beautiful drive. Man, some folks with cash live along this route. The road goes up very high above the lake then through some serious cutbacks to get back down to lake level. We wondered if some of those really large RVs would be able to make those really sharp cutback curves.
We stayed at the South Lake Tahoe KOA for 4 nights. At first sight the KOA looks a bit dreary with small unlevel sites on the side of a mountain, but this place is actually very nice with the sites nestled amongst tall pine trees. Our site #48 was a bit awkward for us to back the wee trailer into but once set up it was fine.
Later on the first evening there we found out how nice... large picnic table with a good sized seating area, for our lawn chairs, where we sat back and enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine and ate some roasted peanuts, tossing the shells into the fire. There is a creek running through the park just down behind our site and the sound from the creek totally drowns out any residual traffic noise from the nearby highway. The remaining 3 evenings followed a similar pattern... sit by the fire, eat some peanuts, sip wine... nice!
One day we did a drive up the east side of the lake. Spectacular views from various places. Very pretty drive.
The very public (read "free") beaches at the south end of the lake were a tad disappointing. Apparently the lake is a bit high right now so at these beaches there is no sand visible, only weeds, lots of weeds...not our favorite type of place to swim. That said, a bit further west on the south end are a few private/state beaches where you have to pay $7.00 per car to get in but the sand beaches are spectacular (and worth every cent). We spent several hours on the beach and in the crystal clear water, a couple of separate days.
South Lake Tahoe seems like development run amok. There is no "there" there... just a long busy main drag, with a few side streets, running all the way up to the Nevada stateline, on the east side of the lake, where there are several large casinos. We went into one of the casinos for lunch one day and had what can only be described as the second worst pizza of this trip if not ever... the worst being the one we had in Boise last week. On friday afternoon, the two north bound lanes of the main drag were bumper to bumper the entire stretch.
Saturday morning leaving Lake Tahoe we went southwest over the Carson Pass (8700 ft) where there were some great views but hard to pull into going south as they all seemed to be on the other side of the road right on a corner with a lot of traffic going each way. Anyway we managed to stop once for a great view...
We ended the week at the Jackson Rancheria RV Park which is located at a native casino resort just east of Jackson. The park is quite nice considering it is only a few years old so when the trees get larger it will be a lot nicer. They advertise two pools but really they have one pool with two hot tubs. Lots of happy kids in the pool in the afternoon but it cleared out later in the day and when we used it first thing in the morning we had it all to ourselves.
The pool was especially nice when the temperature hit the 36 degrees Celsius mark.
On Sunday we drove into the town of Jackson. They have done (and are still doing) a great job of "doing up" the main street. It was a very nice place to stroll and look in the antique/second hand stores and there were a couple of terrific bead stores, one being perhaps the best collection of southwest beads we've seen outside of the "southwest". Just off the main street is an old "Mel and Faye's" diner which we decided to try for lunch. Man, the burgers were flying out of that kitchen. Clearly a local favorite as there was a constant lineup while we were there. We bucked the local trend and settled for a couple of excellent breakfast choices. Later in the afternoon we returned for a Peanut Butter Milkshake... yummmm!
The casino? Not so much luck there. The buffet was pretty good though.
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