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After a gourmet camper breakfast, I started this trip traveling north from Yosemite National Park and took Rt 49 headed to Lake Tahoe.  About half way there was a sign that said road closed.  Thinking that it’s a Saturday and it’s Rt 49, which is the main route to go north around here, figured it’s probably signage left over from the work week.  Turns out in a few miles I ran into a blocked road and a guy in a hard hat saying they were paving today so yes the road is really closed. He gave me detour directions that sounded simple enough, but he never told me how far this was going to be.  It was a beautiful two+ hour ride through cow country, past lakes, over dams, a couple of forks in the road where I needed to flip a coin to decide left or right and scenery that was really incredible.  It wasn’t like I had a schedule to adhere to, but it was a long detour. 

The detour ended up in a town called Sonora, CA where it reconnected with Rt 49.  There was a lot of traffic here due to a street fair on Main Street.  So my choices are to get ticked off that there’s all this congestion and it’s now going to take a while to get through the town, or how about I park the car and participate.  So the destination was Lake Tahoe, but the jewel today turned out to be a scenic detour and a place I never heard of before or planned to visit.  Wait, let me think… #8 in Travel Well, “Be present, the trip is often better then the destination”?  Ah ha, I knew I read that somewhere.  I parked and had a great lunch in a little Mexican cafe on Main St and then walked around for a couple of three hours.  What a great find, what a great afternoon.  There were street musicians, lots of families with kids and the feel of the whole town was good and everyone seemed to be having a fun time.  In the city square and up and down the Main Street there were booths with homemade crafts and local businesses showing their wares.  For me the most interesting was a company that had a touchy-feely exhibit going on with hissing cockroaches and tarantulas.  Having spent a lot of time in NYC and commercial kitchens in my earlier days I’ve already dealt with plenty of cockroaches, but that tarantula…  I don’t like spiders much so I wanted to get a hold of this whopper of an arachnid to help me get past some of the phobia I carry.  I even shy away some from Daddy Long Legs, so this was BIG for me.  There were a lot of interested people and I got close a couple of times but backed off.  After seeing a girl that looked about 8 years old hold this critter I finally got past my angst and held that big, hairy, ugly, nasty spider in the palm of my hand(s).  You know what, wasn’t so bad after all.  Good stretch.  If I had left and not done it, I probably would have been disappointed in myself.  Oh yes, and check back to the end of Blog Post #1, what did that wise man say… “In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take“, so I am glad I did this.  Plus someday I might have grandkids and what would the story be, “Yeah kids, years ago old grandpa almost had a tarantula in the palm of his hands once, but right after the Girl Scout in front of me got done with her turn, I had a breakdown, crawled up in the fetal position on the ground and cried”?  I think not.

After Sonora the loose plan was now to go up near Stanisluas National Forest and find some dispersed (free) camping and that would put me very near Lake Tahoe.  I stopped at a service station on the way, the only thing open on the mountain, and asked the gal at the register about dispersed camping.  She gave me directions to a place about 12 miles away and off I went, uphill.  By time I hit 8,000 feet and got to the turn off she suggested, it was 38 degrees at around 5:00PM and the sun was still high in the sky.  My guess was that by morning it would be in the 20’s, plus there was now some snow and sleet happening. 

So I just kept driving and rode right into South Lake Tahoe.  It looked lovely, expensive and very cold.  Getting on line and looking for weather relief it was apparent that it would be smarter and warmer to drive another 20 or so miles and downhill several thousand feet to Carson City where it was only now in the mid 50’s.  This is the capital of Nevada so no dispersed camping here.   However there were two Walmarts that allowed overnight stays and next to one of them a Trader Joe’s.  Perfect.  The next morning when I woke up in Carson City it was 31 degrees.  When I got out of the camper and looked up at the mountain in the direction of Lake Tahoe where I had come down from last night there was a fresh covering of snow on it.  So I was feeling darned good about my decision to come downhill. 

I got back up to Lake Tahoe in the next couple of days and it is beautiful.  It strikes me as a place where you need some money to live comfortably.  I had breakfast at a local restaurant and the egg and potato dish, coffee and tip was over $20.00.  I’m sure there were other less expensive options around town, but this is what the local place was charging, it’s not the busy season and it was packed in the mid morning.  Got some ideas from the staff at the restaurant on where to go and opted for a ride around the entire lake to start.  To do a full lap is 72 miles or about three hours if you didn’t stop.  The ride was a lot of fun on the Harley, so if you’re in the area do the lake drive by bike or car.  It’s difficult to describe scenery, so I’ll just say that there is a lot of WOW factor here. 

South Lake Tahoe seems to be more the general tourist spot with several large casinos, a whole lot of shopping and warm and cold weather activities.  Going up Rt 89 on the west side of the lake there’s a good amount of camping and recreation areas, but much of it wasn’t opened yet for the season.  The north side of the lake is Tahoe City and it seemed more monied and not as commercial.  At a supermarket stop there were those free real estate listing books so grabbed one off the rack.  Most of the houses shown, were in the millions of dollar range and the agents pictured looked like they should have names like Biff and Barbie.  In general the regular touristy, casino going crowd seemed to be on the South side and the folks on the north side with all those nice properties and high end cars probably were more the type that owned the casinos.  But are they happy?  Probably very.  But for folks just coming for a vacation in a hotel or campground, Lake Tahoe looks like great fun and the place to be in season.  I also did a couple of walk throughs of casinos just to look and they were fairly typical and well kept.  A lot of the upcoming entertainment headliners seemed past their prime, or years ago were once A listers and they most likely fit the profile of the customers that come here now.  Hey, did you know that Bob Newhart is still alive? 

On a “educational” side note, while walking around South Lake Tahoe there was an area where there were a couple of horse drawn carriages that you can hire to ride around the town in.  I noticed that the horses had some weird looking horseshoes on their hoofs.  I suspected that this was some special exotic shoes for the pavement.  I asked one of the drivers what they were.  Turns out that they get a old truck tire, cut out a patch to fit the horses hoof and put that over the regular horseshoes with a layer of silicone in between.  She said they are nice and comfy for the animal and are referred to in “the business” as horse Nikes.  Okay, now we all learned something new today.

So thumbs up on Lake Tahoe the whole area and the entire ride up from Yosemite.

Today’s bonus information is on Tonapah, NV.  It just so happens that I’m a fan of a band from last century called Little Feat.  One of the songs they recorded was called “Willen”.  The chorus states that the protagonist of the song has been to Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi and Tonapah.  Well, I’ve been to Tucson, Tucumcari and Tehachapi in my travels over the past couple of years, but had no idea where Tonapah was… until now.  Sitting in the camper figuring out what to do for a couple of days until it warmed up for the trip back into Lake Tahoe, I was looking at the map and there several hours away was Tonapah, NV.  Just had to go.   The trip was a lot of Nevada desert driving, which is always good for keeping your voice in shape by singing numerous renditions of “100 bottles of beer on the wall”.  When I arrived there wasn’t much of anything, so it really turned out to be a quick gas stop.  However I did see plenty of prideful signs that it is the home of the Muckers high school teams.  I looked on line and found some video clips of their football team in action, which looks like a 7 man squad.  I’ll guess that’s most likely due to population size, and also found that you can buy Mucker logo hats and shirts if you’re so inclined.  The internet truly does have everything.  Leaving town, I did find an oasis in the desert, literally.  There’s a rest stop about 12 miles out town that allows overnight camping and actually has facilities with running water, trees and a nice level camping area to park. 

Anyway, for any Little Feat fans that have been to Tucson, Tucumcari and Tehachapi, if you ever have the itch to explore Tonapah you may not want to make that a special trip of its own.  A highlight of the trip was meeting a few bikers that were coming back from a motorcycle rally called The Laughlin Run further south in Nevada.  So now I know where I’m going to be next year around this time. 

This post also intertwines with an upcoming one on Reno, Carson City and Virginia City… yes, the same Virginia City from the cowboy show Bonanza.  For those old enough to remember, hum the theme from Bonanza a couple of times and I bet it will be stuck in your head all day. 

Campers:  Plenty of camping in these parts, and I was told by some local folks there was displaced camping areas around Tahoe on Rt 89, but since the season isn’t open yet it was difficult to get additional info and since it was too cold to stay I didn’t follow up.  There are two Walmarts in Carson City about 20 miles away and another in Gardener that do allow overnight stays.  Also if you feel the need to do the Tonapah trip, there is free camping available right outside of town.

Bikers:  Some great riding in these areas.  The Lake Tahoe area is worth a whole day of riding on its own and doing a lap around the lake is a good ride.  From this general area, it’s not too far to get to Carson City, Reno, Virginia City but I recommend staying off of Rt 580 unless your in a rush, otherwise almost any other route is a better ride.  Also if you take Rt. 50 going South from here it’s some great riding through mountains and more mind expanding scenery.

Personal Stretches:  This trip my biggest stretch was the Tarantula.  Getting past holding that guy was enough stretch for a few days.  I continue to work on honing my interloping skills too.  The more you keep approaching people that may not care to be approached and pull it off, the easier it gets.