Alumafandango trip – Day 15

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We haven’t been to Reno for 29 years.  The last time was shortly after our son was born, he will turn 30 soon.  We thought we would take a short trip and have my parents watch him all those years ago.  We were supposed to stay two nights but Roxie could only handle one.  She missed him.  I thought we would stay a couple of days to see Lake Tahoe and then some other things in Reno.  We started by heading through Truckee but got sidetracked at the Donner Memorial State Park.

We all remember the worst part of the Donner party’s episode.  Cannibalism.  However there is much more interesting parts to their journey as we saw in a very old film they showed in the visitors center.  It reminded me of the films we used to see in elementary school.  It is a very nice state park there with a campground that we will have to visit in the future.  Here is a picture of the Donner Memorial.  The base of the memorial is the same height of the snow drifts they had to contend with:

Donner Memorial

We had lunch in Truckee at the Squeeze In.  We thought this was the same restaurant (Squeeze Inn) that we had eaten at in Sacramento and Lodi.  It wasn’t.  That was disappointing because Roxie was thinking about their burgers and really wanted one.  The food was very good, however.  Probably the best garlic fries that I have had.

We started the drive on SR89.  We followed the Truckee river and saw many rafters and a very nice bike path.  This appealed to Roxie and she put it on her mental list of things to do in the future.  One fact I did not know about Lake Tahoe is that the Truckee river is the ONLY outlet from the lake and it empties into Pyramid Lake.  However Pyramid Lake does not empty anywhere, it just evaporates.  So Lake Tahoe is the only lake in the US that does not eventually empty to an ocean.

We reached the lake and initially I was just going to go around the north part and head back to Reno.  But we had time and nothing else to do so we went south and around that end, back to the north side and up through Mt Rose and down to Reno.  It was a very pretty drive but surprisingly busy and commercial.  Here is a gallery of pictures:

We completed our day trip.  The campground was windy and smoky for the second night because of fires in California and was not too pleasant.  But it sure did cool down at night, which I like.

The trip is winding down, unfortunately.  I have to get back to work but this was a good precursor to retirement.