Darlene and I went for a short backpacking trip into the southwest corner of Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe), camping a couple of nights at Twin Lakes. We had nice weather except for the heavy and unrelenting winds each night. We spent our layover day making our way cross-country over and up to a nearby peak. Darlene chose to take a nice nap at the saddle, while I finished the climb up to the top for some tremendous views.
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Darlene’s family (Alice, Kathy, Shel and Dan) came for a visit again this month and among other things, Rachel joined us for lunch at BeniHana’s, we visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk and we met up with Maryanne for some sightseeing down Monterey and Big Sur way.
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After our stay in Anaheim to visit the Disney parks, we spent a couple of hours on Friday at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. They’ve got a large collection of historic and iconic cars including vehicles from Hollywood movies featured in various changing exhibits. There’s currently a large Tesla exhibit there which was unexpectedly pretty cool.
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Darlene and I decided to make a little road trip last week to Anaheim to visit the Disney parks. It had been 27 years since I’d been to Disneyland, a little longer for Darlene, and neither of us had ever been to Disney’s California Adventure Park. Happily, Hoan was able to join us for the day at Disneyland.
We were all most impressed with the new-to-us Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area in Disneyland. It was fun to see both old and new stuff, including the holiday versions of classics like the Haunted Mansion and Small World. At California Adventure Park, we were impressed with the many detailed environments created around the park, but particularly the Radiator Springs area from the Pixar “Cars” movie. Some rides weren’t available at each park though – like the Indiana Jones ride was under maintenance all week and several had delayed openings or multiple temporary breakdowns. We actually missed out on Space Mountain entirely as it broke down during our assigned window late in the day.
Unfortunately, despite our mid-week attendance, the normal standby lines were often pretty awful (often 50-80 minutes) and Disney’s paid extra “fast pass” Genie+ system isn’t that great. You can only schedule something every 90 minutes, the most popular ride in each park isn’t included and you’re often assigned a window several hours later so you don’t really get to make use of the “lightning lanes” very many times over the course of the day. Plus, as we experienced, there’s no recourse if the ride breaks down during your assigned window.
Anyway, on the third day we rested, had lunch in the Downtown Disney District between the parks, attempted (and failed) at an escape room in Irvine and met up with Hoan’s family for dinner.
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One year after the camper van was rear-ended and a very long time at a body ship plus several more months getting rebuilt and outfitted, Darlene and I (and Hera) were finally able to head out in the van again for some exploration. We ended up camping out in four different dispersed spots we found over not quite two weeks in an area of the Sierra Nevada between Carson and Ebbetts Passes (often near the Pacific Crest Trail), going exploring by mountain biking, hiking and geocaching.
We had nice weather the whole time except for some wildfire smoke that started to blow in on the last couple of days. We cut the trip a couple days short to avoid getting caught out in a bit of snow forecast for the higher elevations.
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Heading out in the newly restored camper van, Darlene and I had a bit of an unexpected layover in Tahoe as several house maintenance and repair chores ended up taking a lot more time and Hera developed a new health issue. We did take a few days off for some mountain biking including some of the trails from the house near Brockway Summit and taking the Emigrant Trail out to Stampede Reservoir from Prosser Creek.
We also joined Mike and Nanci on the Flume Trail (a well known trail that overlooks Lake Tahoe along the east shore). We started at Spooner Lake, climbed up to Marlette Lake where Mike went for a brief swim and we took a snack break:
We then joined the Flume Trail where Mike promptly tumbled off trail somehow and tangled himself in his bike frame. Happily no one chose to tumble off the steep slopes of the Flume Trail proper but then Nanci had a nasty fall on the ride down the Tunnel Creek Road. With help from several others, we ended up waiting for emergency services to drive a buggy up to treat her with pain meds and move her down to a waiting ambulance. At the Truckee hospital, she was found to have broken a clavicle and a rib. Ouch, not the most fun way to end the day!
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Darlene’s mom Alice and her sisters Kathy and Shel came out for a visit to Santa Cruz. They hit up the Monterey Bay Aquarium, stayed overnight at the Monterey Zoo, visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk, visited Alice’s sister Betty, did a few laps of indoor go cart racing, experienced a drone flight over the bay, a little virtual reality and a bit of video gaming.
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This is a time-lapse recording at the Tahoe house over the 2022-23 winter season – from November 1st to June 1st. The house is at 6800 ft.