Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe (Jan 2015)

My childhood memories are often represented by camping trips to Tahoe with my mom and brother, but like many children, I focused on doing rather than seeing things. I had no idea where I was when we were hiking or swimming or biking, but as an adult amateur photographer, scenery has become significantly more important to me now than it was back then. This year, I took advantage of South Tahoe's Restaurant Week, a friend's cabin to stay in for free, and my mom's extensive knowledge of the area in order to spend a few days driving around and taking pictures of beautiful places.

If you want to introduce yourself to Lake Tahoe in all the right ways, make your way from the south on Hwy 50/89 towards South Tahoe. The drive is stunning and precariously cliffy, with distant views of the lake and surrounding mountains from high above.

Fallen Leaf Lake

Most of my childhood memories involved camping during the summer at Fallen Leaf Lake camp site, watching (from inside the tent, in the sleeping bag, in pajamas) my mom cooking breakfast at the fire pit, sunbathing and picnicking on the pebble beach after mountain biking up dirt hills, and my mom precariously passing a car on the cliff side of a single-lane service road towards a hiking trail to one of my favorite waterfalls. You could imagine how excited I was to hear that the service road down to the lake was open from the lack of snowfall. I only wish the trees would smell the same in the winter as they do in the summertime (they smell like a happy childhood). 

Unfortunately, the service road was too icy in the shade for us to attempt to make our way towards the waterfall, but it isn't likely that it would be terribly exciting anyway after a season of drought. I'm going to try to make a point of visiting again this summer, perhaps making use of the ol' camp site.

Hwy 89 & Emerald Bay

Feel free to stop at turnouts along the highway to take pictures of the views or of the rocky cliff sides above. Over around Emerald Bay are two vista points to view a small island called Fannette Island in the middle of the bay with a little viking castle perched on top called Vikingsholm. It's just adorable, and according to my mom, in the summertime it's a great place to kayak.

Hwy 28 & Crystal Bay

There's a lot of small towns through this route along the shoreline that showcases lots of docks, boat launches, water buoys, and the California/Nevada state line. I recommend stopping in Incline Village and making your way down to the shore of Crystal Bay for some wicked shots of Lake Tahoe and Stateline Point to the west. 

Along the east shore, there's a public parking area to walk down to the boulders where I managed to get some pretty awesome sunset shots on the lake. 

Hope Valley

Off of Hwy 88 South of Tahoe is a road called Blue Lakes Rd that hosts this beautiful valley and creek.

Monitor Pass

Lucky for us, Monitor Pass on Hwy 89 was open during the winter, thanks again to the bittersweet lack of snow California has been having. Take lots of stops along the way to enjoy the mountains, but be sure to make your way over the peak to view the distant horizon of Nevada from the top. My pictures of this didn't really translate the beauty of it in person. 

Kingsbury Grade

After visiting Monitor Pass, we turned back to Hwy 88 to Nevada in order to come in from the east onto Kingsbury Grade on Hwy 207. There are some good turnouts to stop at on the way up for some more Nevada horizon views. 

Meanwhile, going up over the top to the west, the trees often blocked potentially good views of the lake. Boo! It wasn't all bad, though. This road happened to be home to one of the restaurants I ate at for Restaurant Week: Chart House. Their food was delicious. I ate off of their pre fixe menu: caesar salad appetizer, flat iron steak entree, and mud pie dessert, while my mom tried the mango salsa chicken entree and crème brûlée dessert. 

Downtown South Tahoe

It was weird realizing that South Tahoe is both part of California and Nevada. We ate at Ciera Steakhouse within the Montbleu Resort in the Nevada side of downtown where the casinos flourished. The pre fixe meal was so delicious and the service was exquisite! It just felt a little awkward with my mom because the atmosphere was more romantic than anything. I had my first ever (real) french onion soup (my mom's was not real, haha) appetizer, mango/papaya salmon entree, and lava cake dessert with surprise chocolate covered strawberries to finish, while my mom enjoyed a salad appetizer, filet mignon entree, and pina colada cheesecake dessert. 

 

 

On our last day in Tahoe, we had lunch at Artemis Mediterranean Grill because for the last few weeks I've been itching for some gyros. They packed in so much meat in my pita, I had to bring my delicious spiced fries home with their dipping sauce.

As we were heading home west on Hwy 50, it was starting to sprinkle lightly and my car Milo got pretty dirty, but I managed to take a pretty cool picture of the mountains on the go. 

See you again soon, old friend!

Portland

July 2013

My coworker was backing out of time off he had initially decided to take for a Fourth of July weekend and asked me if I would like to claim it instead. Sure, why not! It took a while for me to figure out what I wanted to do or who I would want to do whatever with, but I eventually landed on a road trip north to Portland. Hooray for spontaneity!

DAY ONE
My lovely mother agreed to go with me so that I wouldn't have to travel alone (I'm so not ready for that). It took about 9 hours to get there, driving through flat planes of farmland and weaving through mountains and past Shasta in Northern California. Through one stretch of Oregon, we were startled to find what looked like tumbleweed floating through the air. We were very confused. There were tufts of casually floating grass everywhere in the sky. I don't know either. But you'll know when you're really in Oregon because everything is suddenly so green. It rains much more in Oregon than it does in California, so the plants are very happy and they show it. I would love to live in Oregon some day, maybe in retirement.

We arrived earlier than we expected, so we decided to let our first visit be to Multnomah Falls, a couple of miles east from Portland. It's a very popular destination, and since it was also July 4th, it was a holiday and therefore very crowded. A really cool place where you can view the wonders of nature (a very tall waterfall) without having to hike at all to see it. It's just off of the freeway with loads of parking, a gift shop, and a cafe. There's the option to hike up to the top of the waterfall too, but I wasn't about to go up that far.

Afterwards, we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and visited downtown's charming Pearl District with both high end indie stuff and homeless people areas. Not really sure what to think about that, but it was really hard to find a place to eat on the Fourth of July.

DAY TWO
The next morning, we got up early to make our way to the famous Voodoo Doughnuts. A line out the door didn't surprise me, but it did surprise me that the line also started at the door, so it was pretty misleading. The doughnuts were well worth the wait, as they were superiorly delicious and creative flavor-wise. Their main staple would the the Voodoo doughnut, a raspberry filled in the shape of a voodoo doll and shanked with a pretzel stick. The other must-have is the maple bacon (oh my god) bar. Yes, bacon. On the maple bar. It was like eating a bacon maple sweet pancake breakfast to go. I really liked the butterfinger doughnut, too.

Next we visited Washington Park where the Japanese garden and Rose garden reside among a crap ton of other things. The hills in this park are forested with these tall canopy trees that are amazing to be under. It feels very secluded. Roses don't interest me very much, but the Japanese garden was immaculate. I couldn't put my camera down!

If you want a great view of the city of Portland, visit Pittock Mansion just up the road from Washington Park. There's a nice area with benches to sit there for a while, or you could pay to go inside the mansion, which I didn't bother doing myself.

Leaving Pittock Mansion, we weren't really sure what to do next, but were heading west anyway, and eventually thought, hey, why not keep going all the way to the coast? The drive was very pretty and hilly and forested, and we eventually made it to Seaside where we got out of the car and visited some of the shops along the beach. A huge statue of Lewis and Clark alerted us to the fact that this very spot was the end of their adventure across the country.

We didn't want to drive back the same way, so we headed a little bit North to Astoria first before going east again. My mom told me that this town Astoria was where they filmed the movie The Goonies. Pretty sweet, but I didn't really recognize anything in particular. By the time we got home we were pooped, especially my mom who prefers to be the driver.

DAY THREE
In the morning we visited Portland's famous Saturday Market. Lots of craft and food booths pop up all over downtown along the Willamette river and you could literally spend hours there trying to visit all the tents. My feet definitely hurt and we had to quit early. Some of my favorite booths involved woodworking or blown glass pieces, but my mom's favorite was a guy who made chains and inspired her to learn how to make them herself.

Our last adventure in Portland was stationed at the Leach Botanical Garden. The garden feels very secluded, but it's actually in the middle of town, which is kind of disorienting. It's very beautiful, and often hosts wedding receptions, but allows visitors to tour the grounds where a stream cuts through forested areas. If Oregon wasn't so beautifully lush and green, it probably wouldn't have felt as magical as it did.

We made our way down to Salem that day in order to spare us an hour of driving the following day on our way back home. And good thing too, because our bed in Portland had a bed-ridden-morbidly-obese-man-sized dent on my mom's side.