Lake Tahoe: There is SNOW in California?

Weekend of Nov. 29, 2009

Lake Tahoe

(this link is secret and you're not invited)

After visiting Train for lunch, I drove back down to San Jose to meet up with Jimmy. We went out and got some Indian food for dinner (I had previously harbored an intense hatred of Indian food, but I started coming around to it. I decided that I wanted to make some changes in my life, and some of those changes included "eating more kinds of food." Curry still smells like shit though). After my tastebuds had finished their "what the fuck what that?" sensation, we took a trip to this really flat field near Jimmy's house to go MOTHERFUCKING KITE FLYING.

I was singing Mary Poppins songs ALL DAY

So we get back to his house and I'm like "want to drive up to Lake Tahoe for the night?" and he was like "sure." So we did that. We called a cheap hotel on the way and drove the three-ish hours over an extremely snowy highway with no ledge protection... so if our car wanted to slide off the road, it was going to. And then we'd gracefully tumble down the side of the mountain to what I assume would be an extremely firey death.
But that didn't happen because Soup is an amazing car. We made it to our hotel and learned that, hey, it's been snowing at Lake Tahoe for quite some time. And it's frickin freezing. I'm glad I had the ONE sweatshirt I brought to California. We had a few beers in the hotel room and went to bed soon thereafter.
The next day was adventure day: our plan was to drive around the lake (we were on the south side, so we'd drive up through Nevada, cross over into California, and then head back from the southern exit). We learned that Lake Tahoe is beautiful.

"I bet I can jump to that tree from here"

There were plenty of great viewing spots. We drove up one mountain to get a better look of the entire lake area, because I'll be DAMNED if I see only sections of the lake at a time!

After several unsuccessful timer photos, we finally asked somebody to take a picture of us

We took a few paths down to the lake itself at times. It was clear blue and looked SO FRIGGN NICE. Well... the parts that weren't frozen. Then we crossed back over to the California side of the lake. Noticeably prettier, and way less casinos.

I prefer the California side. So does Soup (Soup is a car and can't give a thumbs-up, just trust me on this).

It was about this time that my car started beeping at me and flashing a warning indicator that I had never seen before. It was the low-tire pressure, and it completely freaked me out, because THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE ANYTHING HELPFUL. It was just the cold air fucking with my tire pressure, so we filled up some air and went on our merry way. We grabbed some grub at a little place by the lake, and then continued on our journey. It doesn't take that long to drive around the lake, but it is really fun with a lot of great views: I'd definitely recommend it.

This is right after our snowball fight. We're friends again.

Inspiration Point truly... inspired me

Completing our 360 degree journey, we then drove back to San Jose, where I dropped Jimmy off at home and then headed back to beautiful Hanford after a great week off of work. Sorry, I meant "work."

I'm glad a blizzard didn't come while we were visiting. Because that would have made our trek back QUITE difficult.