We made it to Tahoe on August 28th after our (mostly) fun drive across the country. (Lots of gorgeous scenery, but some bleak areas as well.) It was a bit smokey / orange sky when we arrived. We hoped for improving conditions, but mainly we were excited to unpack after being on the road for 10 days. Our rental house in Tahoma (on the west shore of Lake Tahoe) was well appointed and had 5 bedrooms for us to choose from.

A lot of things were closed due to smoke from the the nearby Caldor and Dixie fires, but we made the most of our first full day by going to the lake.

We didn’t get to stay in relaxed or unpacked mode for very long as the next day we got an automated call saying we were in a mandatory evacuation area due to the Caldor fire. Jeff came home from work and we packed up again. I was able to find an airbnb in Tahoe City, just a bit further north of our month long rental so we headed there uncertain how long we’d be relocated or if we’d even be able to go back.

We evacuated on August 30th and quickly became familiar with the Calfire daily briefings and the El Dorado county evacuation maps, checking constantly to see if our blue dot made it out of the red.

We got the good news that we could return to Tahoma on September 5th.

We were very fortunate to have minimal impact from the fires, just 6 nights evacuated, when so many people lost so much. The firefighters and their support crews did amazing work keeping the fire at bay and I am extremely grateful for their efforts. The communication team was particularly impressive though I will admit we were all starting to get a bit salty about being indefinitely evacuated by the time the order lifted.

We did quite a few hikes whenever the air quality permitted outdoor activity. My sister turned me on to an app called Relive which “records” your hike and creates a cool video from pictures you take along the way. Here are a few videos:

Shirley Canyon Hike in Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe, also ignore the last few super fast miles, I forgot to stop recording when we got in the car – lol)
https://www.relive.cc/view/vNOPYLwAKY6

Blackwood Canyon Hike
https://www.relive.cc/view/vWqBrxmExQq

Five Lakes at Alpine Meadows Hike
https://www.relive.cc/view/vXvLXm4KM7v

Jeff and Jon’s mom, Kathy, passed away in July 2019. We were able to get back to California to have a memorial ceremony at the time and planned to have another ceremony to spread Kathy’s ashes the following year. The pandemic delayed those plans along will billions of other plans, but we were able to visit some of Kathy’s favorite spots on this trip. We memorialized Kathy on a weekend away in San Francisco.

In addition to the Bay Area, Kathy loved Yosemite and instilled that love in Jon and Jeff through yearly visits at a minimum when they were growing up so we spent a weekend away in Yosemite Valley too. Jeff was keen to hike to the top of Half Dome, but I was not so keen given the 14+ mile distance and scary exposed heights/cable assisted climb. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Jeff our two attempts to get permits to do the hike were denied. We didn’t “win” the lottery and I was more than happy to “just” do the 8 mile hike Vernal and Nevada Falls.

We had several bear sightings in the Tahoe area, but never managed to think to take a picture at the time. One was while we were on a run and I was scared the bear was going to follow us, but luckily he decided he had better things to do than chase a couple of joggers.

In one of those it’s a small world moments, our good friend Tiffany who is a fellow American/Australian was back visiting her family in Nevada. We got a chance to meet up with her, her mom and her two super cutie kiddos for a day at the lake. We missed having her husband Andy there to add in all the serious Aussieness as he was holding down the fort in Melbourne.

We had a fantastic month in Tahoe with a few bumps along the road to keep it interesting. Many thanks to Jeff for coordinating the house rental and being an all around great Tahoe guide. I’ll leave you with some more scenery of Lake Tahoe in all its glory before my next post on our trip back east.

 

Jon and I set out on the road heading west a few months ago. We were fortunate to book a month’s lodging staying right next to Jon’s big brother Jeff. Jeff lives in the Lake Tahoe area and moved into an apartment above a garage next to a house that is rented out to lucky people like me and Jon. But first, we had to get there and we wanted to make the most of the trip.

We fit in a few stops to see quirky things along the lines of the Australian big things we enjoyed stopping to see in the past.

Our first big stop was in Arlington, Iowa to visit Jon’s uncle, cousins and their families. They took us on an epic adventure on side-by-sides to see a side of Iowa we didn’t know existed.

After a fun bacon, sausage, and beer filled stop we made our way to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had a blast hanging out with Jon’s cousin Sara and got to enjoy being outdoors in Minneapolis during the few days you can enjoy the outdoors there – hahaha. We also visited Sara’s favorite locals and played endless fetch with her cute dog Penny.

Our next stop was deep in ye olde wild west, Deadwood, South Dakota. It was an interesting place to walk around and get a good night sleep before heading to Custer State Park, also in South Dakota.

—  Hiking in Custer State Park —

We did a half-day of hiking in Custer State Park and then drove to Casper, Wyoming. Wyoming was not exactly full of lovely scenery, the state tree is sometimes said to be a telephone pole, but Casper was a great pit stop. We stayed walking distance to a brewery that turned out to have good food and beer. We were also walking distance to a trail along the North Platte River which did provide lovely scenery with an unfortunate side of mosquito bites. I think I got 10 on a 30 minute walk!!

Our next stop was the picture perfect town of Park City, Utah. We stayed at a Hilton Grand Vacations property a bit away from downtown, but still ski-in/ski-out in the winter. It was by far our fanciest accommodation on the trip.

We took a gondola up to explore the hiking trails available at the resort when snow hasn’t buried them.

After getting our hiking in, we headed further west to Elko, Nevada for our last night on the road. Along the way we stopped at the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats.

We had surprisingly good Chinese takeout in Elko and in the morning we headed to Tahoma by way of Costco in Reno.