When you stay in a hotel, never open your door to....

your children.

Not if they are 5 and 7 and are already in an ongoing tussle/debate about whose turn it is to open the door with the key card. Oh, the heavenly joy and excitement of it being one's turn to use the key card! Oh the dashed hopes when someone hears them coming and opens the door unthinkingly, unfeelingly, unlovingly before they get there. Even if she did open it because she heard her five-year-old crying and wailing and thought that someone had been hurt. Turns out he was just really really mad because Daddy said he couldn't use the key card.

So anyway, we had a really good trip to Lake Tahoe this weekend. We drove up I-80 on Saturday and spent the afternoon at the infamous Donner Pass - including watching the movie at the museum, which had my 5 yo worried about being snowed in and my 7 yo wondering why they didn't pick up the cows that died in the desert and take them along to use for food later. Because it's August and not even remotely cold, and because they already had to abandon a lot of their stuff including some wagons because they didn't have enough oxen anymore to pull it all. Oh, and we played in and around Donner Lake for a while.

We spent one night in a hotel in Truckee, which had a "cuzzi" which was too hot. The next day, we drove a ways down the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and stopped in the state park and went swimming. It was cold (OK, 70's) and really windy and the waves were big. Can I tell you how big an advance it is for my 7 yo who has always hated having his face get wet or to feel out of control to wear a scuba mask and hold my hand and jump through waves that are way over his head?

Then we drove the rest of the way to South Lake Tahoe and stayed in a Days Inn close to the Nevada border, which meant that it was in a crowded area with few trees. But it had a pool and an "a-cuzzi" (building a word, syllable by syllable), the former was freezing, the later was lukewarm, but enough to keep one from freezing. We were also within walking distance of Chaat's Cafe where we had decent Indian food that night (DS1 had a hot dog and DS2 had some naan bread) and a sushi place (can't remember the name) that was quite good (and the kids had plain white rice and DS1 had shrimp tempura).

The next day, Monday, we dropped my mom off at a laundromat while we were going to take a quick drive to Emerald Bay. Well, it took longer than I thought to drive there, the kids were on some really awful loud behavior, and then there was nowhere at all to park in the lots, so we stopped for a bit at the scenic overlook and went back for Granny. I dropped everyone at the hotel and went to the grocery store and got fruit and bagels and cream cheese.

After that, we headed back out to Emerald Bay and found a parking spot and hiked the mile down the Vikingsholm trail. The kids and DH played in the water a bit, but there weren't enough waves for DS1's taste. Then we went up to see the Lower Eagle Falls, then back down, then all the way up the Vikingsholm trail again. It's a fairly gently slope and very wide and smooth, just looooooong.

Emerald Bay has only a narrow opening onto the rest of the lake and is very calm and beautiful. Vikingsholm is a big house in a Nordic style commissioned by a woman with more money than sense in the 1920's. That's not fair, because it's a cool-looking house (from the outside - we didn't go on the tour) and the setting is fabulous. She also had a tea house built on the island in the bay - the only island in all of Lake Tahoe, the third deepest lake in the US, though only 20-ish miles long and 12-ish miles wide.

So after our Japanese restaurant (see above), I was ready to collapse and my mom and I stayed in the hotel room and chatted while DH took the kids out to the pool where they played and screamed for almost two hours. I finally went out and said they should come in and they barely dried off and put on their PJ's and lay down and WHAM they were asleep.

DS2 woke up this morning and asked if it were tomorrow, then was cross because it was morning and the night had gone too quickly. Ah, a sign of a day well spent!

This morning after Denny's, we went to Pope's Beach which is closer to South Lake Tahoe. It was chilly and windy, so the kids got wet, but spent much more time playing in the sand. After lunch of leftover cheese and bread and fruit, we piled in the car and headed out on I-50. We stopped not far over the pass because there's a trail to a waterfall. Turns out, it's a couple of miles and you end up still about a half mile away from the big falls. We just went the qurter mile to the small cascades lower down, because I am a grumpy spoilsport and climbing a mile over a barely-visible trail of rough boulders seemed a bit much after a busy weekend - especially with two young children, an out-of-shape tired wife, and a 60+ year old mother-in-law with a pinched nerve in her hip - just to relive the glory days of the one time DH hiked up a mountain with his dad when he was a teenager.

So grumpy old meany won and I drove the rest of the way home. I was thinking of stopping at Sutter's Mill just north of Placerville, but DS2 was asleep, I don't know what time they close for the day, and we were 45 minutes from home at that point. So here we are.

Pictures to come, um, soonish. We forgot the digital cameras and so I bought the one-use ones (a pack of two that was on sale at Long's drugs) and I will need to get them developed and then scan some pics....

Oh, and the bark of Ponderosa pines smells like vanilla. I had to get that in there. Especially since DS2 still has a patch of sap on his right cheek from two days ago due to sniffing trees.

Other stuff I found out: Lake Tahoe doesn't drain to the ocean, it goes down the Truckee River and through Reno and to another lake which then evaporates.

The lake was originally a low place among mountains, but volcanoes blocked the Truckee River and it filled up to some really deep depth (ah, numbers elude me), which is why it doesn't have islands.

The water going in is mainly from small creeks and swamps and is filtered before it gets there, which is why the lake is clear to an amazing depth.