Biking, sightseeing and resting in Lake Tahoe

As promised, here are some pictures of our week-end in Lake Tahoe and an account of our trip:

Thursday: We left Mountain View in the evening and arrived at our hotel in South Lake Tahoe a little before midnight. It looks like our good old Jetta is getting fancier: it now also shifts automatically (well, only from 5th gear to neutral).

Friday: After a decent breakfast at the hotel and a short walk along the lake shore, we went for a mountain bike ride. We started together from a trailhead at Fountain Place road. Marie followed the Trout Creek Trail back to South Lake Tahoe and the swimming pool (she learned the fun (?) of riding some sandy sections along the way). In the mean time, I biked up to Armstrong Pass and, after a 1000m climb, went down Saxon Creek trail (aka Mr. Toad's Wild Ride). According to the guide book Bruno gave me last year (Mountain Biking Lake Tahoe, by Lorene Jackson), it's one of the legendary trails in Tahoe: "Mr. Todd's is for advanced riders with the good sense to walk the crazy stuff"... Which is true: at one point, I had to step of my bike :-P

In the afternoon we visited the Tallac Historic site "where wealthy San Franciscans built their elaborate summer estates in the late 1800's and the early 1900's". For dinner, we went to Cafe Fiore: a nice "Italian" restaurant along Ski Run Boulevard.

Saturday: In the morning we visited Vikingsholm, another "house" built along the shores of Emerald Bay by Lora Knight in 1929. It is the copy of a 1,200-year-old Viking castle. In the late afternoon, I went for another "quick" ride along the beautiful Flume Trail... Still a 2h15min ride, but for 36km and about 1000m climb that's pretty quick ;-) That evening, we discovered a great restaurant: "Evans" on Emerald Bay Road.

Sunday: My enthusiasm about the Flume Trail grew on Marie and she decided she wanted to check it out too. We drove to Incline Village (North-East of Lake Tahoe) and biked the course followed by the XTerra Nevada Challenge. In the end it turned out to be a "little" too much for Marie, but the magnificent views on Lake Tahoe and at Marlene Lake made up for it. It's only when we reached the highest point of the tour, that we saw the huge Angora Fire at the other end of the Lake. We had initially planned to spend a few more hours at the pool, but due the slightly longer than expected biking part (hum), we had to skip the pool (which was closed due to "raining ashes" anyway).

Goeric