Summer 2011

Today was for sightseeing. We decided to drive the 73 miles around Lake Tahoe and stop at interesting sights and photograph them. We thought it might take most of the day... certainly beyond lunch. We packed some sandwiches and set off on the adventure. We were back before lunch and that included a traffic jam that took at least half an hour to get through.

Why so fast? First, there are only a few places where you can safely pull over and photograph the view. We found that some of them were poorly marked and others were full. We did stop at one viewing area on the Nevada side of the lake between Sand Harbor and Incline Village where we took the pictures shown below. Another beautiful view was on the California Side overlooking Emerald Bay. There was a viewpoint with parking and additional parking on the other side of the road. It was so crowded, without any open spot, that people parked on what little road shoulder was available. This slowed traffic considerably and we got an opportunity to view Emerald Bay from about 200 feet above the water level. Once you pass Emerald Bay, you are almost back to South Lake Tahoe.

Other than the views of Lake Tahoe, the route reminds us of a few towns like Lake George Village, NY (for those of you familiar with it) separated by trees. Once you are out of South Lake Tahoe, CA and Stateline, NV, you still have the tourist orientated business, but on a much smaller scale. The two south side of the lake cities are larger and have bigger facilities (i.e. Harrah's in Stateline). The only town that seemed a little different was Incline Village, NV. While it still catered to the tourist trade, it did seem to be more subdued and there were many more homes and condos rather than small hotels. Between the "touristy" towns there were some stretches of the route that had pretty fancy homes either hanging on the hills overlooking the lake or on the lake side of the road.

After we got back to the campground, the clouds started coming in and there is a 20% chance of thundershowers. We decided that we will stay here for the rest of the day.