Lake Tahoe, The Good, The Bad, The Good

And it did! That's where I've been posting during my blog hiatus.

During my blog absence Mr. T and I took a long overdue week off from daily life and headed north to Lake Tahoe. Our first visit to this beautiful area.

We took one of the smaller highways which ended up being a spectacular drive scenery-wise. Timewise it was long-about 8 hours.

Heading out from Orange County with our bicycles loaded on the back of the truck.

It was totally worth the time. We stopped several times along the way and my "go-to California expert", Debby, from  the blog, "Just Breathe"   gave us a great suggestion for a lunch stop.

Take a look at the changing scenery we encountered on that drive:

Beautiful deserts

Open Road, big sky...

One of my favorite sights along the way!

We couldn't figure this one out.  It looked like a fault line.

 Debby, do you know what this is?

Yosemite is over that way about 30 miles.

 We hope to go THERE next summer.

Time for a stretch - it was cold!

We left temps in the 80s and 90s. Had snow by the time we reached Tahoe.

A very strange lake. I thought it was a salt lake,

 but these were calcium formations. Mono Lake.

A professional shot I found on google:

Then...

Lunch! A large bakery/deli. Has been there for a very long time.
I had two other people recommend it besides Debby.

Told you! Snow! At the end of April!

Guess who looking a the view of Lake Tahoe from the south end.

Here's a little panorama shot I took.  Please forgive the muttering in the audio...

The first day after we arrived we drove around the entire lake.

This was my favorite part of Lake Tahoe.

 Emerald Bay.

We got a little closer a couple of days later on a boat tour.

We waited for the snow to melt before using our bikes. However we can out to the truck one morning and this is what we found:

Gone! Lock on rack jimmied, steel cable cut.

We called hotel security and the police.  When asked if we had pictures of the bikes, I only had this to email to the police officer. I told him he would get his laugh of the day when he returned to the station and saw the picture I had sent him:

You can see the two black and whites back there in the trailer.

We aren't strange.

So that was the bad: our bikes were gone.

Put a pall on our stay and we weren't happy with hotel management's lack of response.

The good: Our Renter's Insurance covered the cost of the bikes in full!

More good: I wrote a letter to the hotel operations manager and explained how disappointed we were, not with our accomodations, but by the lack of concern showed by the staff we approached many times.

I got a phone call from the operations mgr and she agreed with me that we had not been treated as well as we should have been. They re-imbursed us for 50% of our stay, which we felt was fair.

So, I can now say in good conscience, Harrah's in South Lake Tahoe is a wonderful, reasonably priced (with Groupon!) place to stay. Excellent service, food, convenience. 

But don't leave your bikes in the parking lot!

Now, more good:

A castle-style 'cottage' built in the 1940s .

There it is from the boat. There are tours of it available in the summer months, but you cannot access it by boat. You must hike down. And then of course, hike back.  Maybe by my next visit I will be able to do that - I hope so!

The small turret on the island across from the house where

the 'lady of the house' had tea every afternoon. Accessible by boat only.

Trying to stay warm during our boat ride.

That beautiful, clear, blue water that Lake Tahoe is famous for.

There he is again!

Even I was cold!

A hardy young man and his best friend.

I thought I'd end with some bling. This picture was taken inside an old saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. This gorgeous chandelier is original glass dating back to the late 1800s. Teddy Roosevelt, Doc Holiday, Mark Twain and numerous others sat under it, 'in the day'.

So, there you have it folks: The Good, The Bad and The Good.