Tahoma, Lake Tahoe (days 69 to 73)

An eight hour drive from Las Vegas in Bob's BMW 535 and we were at the cabin in Tahoma, Lake Tahoe.  There's not too much to say about the drive.  Until you get to the last fifty miles or so, there's not too much to see apart from the desert and a few almost derelict towns, mostly ex-mining settlements.  [This posting is actually being written on the journey back from Tahoe.]

Actually, I rather like the desert, with its low shrub, Joshua trees, occasional tumbleweed, hawks hovering, looking for prey, and the odd dust devil. The dust devils are quite remarkable and I don't understand how they're formed.   Apparently, they are just mini-tornadoes, but they don't seem to move at all, just sitting there blowing up little clouds of dust.  They are only few and far between, so it's not at all obvious what causes them.  

There's not too much colour in the desert, but it seems that there are always impressive mountains in the distance, in whichever direction you care to look.  And the skies today have been so dramatic, clear blue with lots of really interesting low cloud, high-level Cirrus and the occasional vapour trail, slowly spreading, as it breaks up.   They're the sort of skies you might see as Microsoft Windows wallpaper!


Then, of course, there's the odd brothel, not too many, but every fifty miles or so.   They are really seedy looking places, often not much more that a caravan, stuck out in the desert, but with somewhat  'exotic' names such as Shady Lady.  It's hard to imagine who uses them, apart from, perhaps, the odd trucker.   Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, but it is in some of the outlying counties.  However, I can't really believe it's very hard to find whatever you want in Las Vegas, provided you have the money.

It's over twenty years since I was last at Lake Tahoe, but not much seems to have changed.  There's been some new building but, thankfully, so far at least, it's not been over-developed and is still a very attractive holiday location.  The lake itself is about twenty-five mile long, surrounded by mountains and totally calm, at least whilst we were there.  The colours vary from various shades of blue to an emerald green, depending on the depth of the water, which, at its deepest is over 1,600 feet.  In summer, there's a lot of activity on and around the lake, especially boating of various forms and swimming. 

One day, we drove to the southern-most point of the lake, Emerald Bay, one of the most photographed places in the country.   I remembered it from the last time I was there and it's still as beautiful.   Whilst we were there, we also walked up to the nearby Eagle Falls.  My camera surely worked overtime that day.

The nearby town of Truckee also looks very much the same as it used to, albeit with quite a few of the shops having closed down as a result of the recession.   The railroad still runs right down the south side of the main street.  Unfortunately, Truckee, like Las Vegas, seems to have been hit much harder by the recession than most places in the UK, maybe because they're both tourist centres and discretionary spending is the first thing to be hit when times are hard.  Incidentally, last evening I managed to find out how Truckee got its name.   Apparently, it's a corruption of "welcome" in the language of the Washoe, the local native-American tribe.

When I first went to Tahoma, the cabin was owned by Bob's dad, but it's now been taken over by his sister, Dorinda, and her husband, Ron. They have been wonderful hosts during these last few days and I only hope I can return the compliment in Portugal before too long.  For the first couple of days, their son Mike and his girlfriend, Susan, were also with us and we had a lot of fun together, especially playing poker.   Susan didn't really want to play as she said she was no good at it, but, of course, she ended up being the biggest winner.

Winter has been late in sloughing off its colder aspects this year and we've had snow on a couple of nights.  Indeed, it was snowing quite heavily as we drove up through Reno and all the way on to Lake Tahoe.   The local ski runs at Squaw Valley (where they had the Olympics some years ago) and at Heavenly Valley (which we could see right across the lake) both look well covered in snow and we think they are still open, although we never went close enough to see for sure.  Last night it snowed again and the car was covered this morning, but the roads are clear and right now we're headed to Las Vegas.   If I see anything interesting on the way, I may note it down later.

Yesterday and the day before, we went north into California to play golf.  Both the courses we played, Plunas Pinas and Whitehawk Ranch, are really beautiful, with tall pines lining all the fairways and lovely views over to the nearby Sierra Nevadas, still covered in snow.  The courses were in pretty good condition, despite the weather they've suffered of late, and we had a great time.  Apart from the game in Las Vegas a couple of days ago, it was the first time I'd played for several months and I was quite pleased with my golf, winning one game and halving the other.   I used Bob's old irons and shared his driver, but it's about time he bought himself a sand-iron!


I'm supposed to flying home tomorrow, but I hear that the BA strike started yesterday and is planned to run for five days.   Last time I checked, BA thought that they would be running my flight, but I won't know more until I can get on the Internet at Bob's place.   It would be a shame if I had to stay in Las Vegas longer, but, if it happens, I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and bear it out until they deign to fly me home again.   As they say, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.


I said I'd comment if anything interesting happened.  Well it has.   I was driving about ten miles short of Tonapah when I got pulled over for speeding.  A Highway Patrol car, coming the other way, said he clocked me on his radar at 95mph.  I don't believe I could have been going that fast as there should be a 10% allowance on the speedometer and I don't think it was reading more than 90, possibly 95 at the most.   But you don't argue with those guys and so I took my punishment like a man.  We had to follow him 10 miles to the nearest courthouse, in, would you believe, Radar Road! There I had to lodge a bond of $347, plus $10 credit card fee and was given a date in July for the court appearance,  before a Judge Joe Maslach.  Since I obviously won't appear, the bond will be used to pay my fine. 

I was also ticked off by the cop for not having my passport with me, as there was no evidence that I was in the country legally and I might well have evaded Homeland Security and could be a terrorist.  In all honesty, he was pretty reasonable and I certainly was speeding, if not quite as fast as he maintained.  He didn't pull his gun or abuse me, but he did say that if he'd wanted to be nasty, he could have made us drive all the way back to Hawthorne, some ninety miles in the direction from which we'd just come.  Given that we still have over 200 miles to go, that would have been a real pain. 

Whilst I was waiting to be processed, Bob wound me up saying that I might well be handcuffed, have to spend the night in jail and then be butt-fucked by a couple of red-necks, but at least none of that happened so I'll just have put it all down to experience.  He also said, in all seriousness, that if I'd been caught driving at over 100mph, it would have been really nasty, involving a charge of reckless driving, with a hefty fine, and possibly having to go straight to gaol. 

I did get a picture of the courthouse, for the record, and wanted to ask the cop for his picture (I did get his car - see above), but I thought that might be pushing it a bit.  As an afterthought, since the speeding ticket, we've seen nothing but cops on the road and at least eight drivers getting tickets.   The coming weekend is the Memorial Day holiday and it seems they've decided to come out early this afternoon.   I've now been caught speeding in both New Zealand and the USA, which is not too clever.  I won't be driving again this holiday, but I'd better watch out when I get back to the UK. 


On my last night in Las Vegas, Bob and I went downtown for a little action.   The downtown area is much more like Las Vegas as I remember it all those years ago.  We didn't do too much, but we did have dinner in the Golden Nugget, walked around town a bit, watched the light show in Freemont Street and hit a couple of casinos.  First we went to Binion's, where the dealers were all busty girls with it all hanging out.  Unfortunately, we didn't like the variant of blackjack they played, so we soon moved back to the Golden Nugget, where the games played were entirely conventional.   We were both quite lucky, ending up ahead by about $50 each, more than enough to pay for dinner, so we were quite happy and went home for a last bottle of wine, before my departure next day.


I still don't actually know whether or not I'll be able to get back tomorrow. The BA website says that the flight will be leaving tomorrow, but they now have no record of my booking, so I don't know what will happen.  I'll try to talk to a real person in the morning.   So far I've only been able to get through to a call centre with automated responses, which are no good to me.  [Update: there was actually no problem at all.  It was just that BA had used a completely different reference from the one I'd been given and which had worked for every other flight on my trip.  For some reason, BA uses a different number, but doesn't bother to tell you what it is!]