On the Road

Adventures Begin Here

April 29^th we woke Phae up from her nap at the storage place.  (I decided to name the motorhome after growing very sick of forming those words over and over -- and after hearing Bob refer to it as our “unit”.  Unit?  Blecch.)

So, Phae it is and we are off.

The plan

Bob, with his usual scienfic approach, has planned a slow crawl from Los Altos to Yellowstone with no detail left to chance.  We will have three to four days in each place and our longest drive will be just over 200 miles.

Grass Valley

  

This has become a favorite place of mine, not only because I can visit my brother and his wife here, but for its charm.  A rather achingly cute old western décor town, it sits in the midst of Ponderosa pine that are for me the picture perfect tree.  With its great height, beautiful patterned bark and graceful branches of long needles, the Ponderosas scent the air and you know you are in the mountains, in the country, just somewhere far away.

A remarkable thing happened quite by accident in Grass Valley.  By pure happenstance, I met an old friend.  She had been my BFF from sixth grade to first year of high school.  She had moved away then to Lake Tahoe.   Most people would think that was pretty cool, but being 13, she hated it, naturally.  In getting reacquainted, we made another remarkable discovery – we both have children who are botanists.  Botanists are pretty darn uncommon, so I find that quite amazing.   And still further down the small-world path, she was preparing to go to Hawaii for two weeks where she had rented a house on the Big island …. we decided at that point that perhaps we should stop comparing notes before it got too weird!  I hope she had a good time and enjoyed Hawaii as much as we did.

Truckee - Lake Tahoe

Truckee is an old west town located near Lake Tahoe.  Being close to some of the best skiing in the world and one of the most beautiful lakes to be found anywhere, it is, of course, extremely popular, but so far is maintaining its charm.

Lake Tahoe is 22 miles long, 12 miles wide and more than 1600 feet deep at the deepest point.  This latter fact accounts for the incredible blueness of its water.  In the 1900s when it was first measured, it was found that objects could be seen clearly 100 feet down, such was the clarity of the water.  We are up to 67 feet of clarity today thanks to algae fed by run off from farming.  (And according to numerous signs seen about the lake, thanks in a small way also to dog poop.  There are lots of rules governing dogs there, so just to be perverse, I guess, everyone visiting Lake Tahoe brings Fido with them.  Dogs everywhere and they are not small.  They prefer them big here.)

Be that as it may, there is no more beautiful spot in the world.  It is simply impossible to take a bad picture of Lake Tahoe.

And  Saturday night was made special for the moon being closer and appearing larger than any time in 2012.  The “Super Moon” over Lake Tahoe ... hard to imagine anything lovelier.

PS

Some of you know my dad died in April.  Thank you for your kind words.  I have posted  the obituary that appeared in several airline publications.  I invite you to visit http://flownwest2012.blogspot.com/

In May my daughter graduated from the University of North Carolina with her Master’s degree.  Dad would have been so proud.