Truckee: Change of Venue

This is another post in the series about our visit to see our friends Kelley and Mark in Truckee, CA. On Sunday evening, we moved from one of the properties that Kelley manages to another, much nicer property in the Tahoe Donner neighborhood. We arrived near dusk and got straight to making dinner for the four of us and did not really have a chance to look around the house until the following morning, Monday morning.

This morning, for the second day in a row, after the Komodo Dragon incident the previous morning, I was also rudely awakened, this morning by a cacophonous serenade just outside our bedroom and not by my spouse. You may recall that we went to sleep the evening before with the windows in our bedroom open. At the crack of dawn as it was just becoming light, the neighborhood denizens decided it would be a good hour for us to awaken.

A pair of Douglas' squirrels posted up outside our windows and shrilly gave each other what for in that inimitable way that only these little highly vocal rodents can. To add insult to injury, one of the resident Steller's Jays, that we would see later nosing about the deck and yard scrabbling for food, decided to join the fray, offering round after round of its harsh croaking cry.

The Local Alarm Clock

Fully awake, I decided to get up and tackle the coffee issue, this time finding a pot that was welcomely one and a half times the size of ours at home. And so once again, I had to guess at the amount of beans to grind for our coffee. I ended up with pretty decent coffee after which, I decided to poke about this enormous 4500-square foot home.

The house is well-designed and no expense was spared in its construction, especially in its finishes from heated floors, to slate counters, to wide plank flooring, to beautiful stonework. The largest suite is out over the garage and is roughly the same size as the state of Rhode Island. On the bottom floor is a full-fledged man cave complete with a huge bar, pool table, shuffle board table, and foosball table. The room we slept in was on the main floor and there were two additional bedrooms upstairs with a huge loft in the vaulted ceiling. In short, the house was far more than just the two of us needed, but what a cool space. Kelley, thanks for the hookup!

I Love Where the Pine Meets the Stone

After coffee and wandering the interior of the house, I went outside to take in the exterior elevations of the pretty amazing house. If I had to do it all again, I might have become a residential architect, which would have fed the creative need in me, albeit in a different way than being a chef. House design really interests me in the same way that designing a highly functional restaurant or residential kitchen interests me.

On arriving at the house the evening before, the architect in me noticed the fustercluck above the former ground-floor front entry, now barricaded by an ornamental maple. The architects managed to bring together three different steep roof pitches as you see in the photo below. All three roofs shed their snow into the the entryway. My inner designer is shaking its head: in snow country, and the Sierra Nevada is serious snow country, you must design a house with drop zones for the snow.

Roof Pitches: Nightmare in Snow Country

Ten Foot Snow Poles in all Driveways

Deciduous Cotoneaster Showing Fall Color

Maple Just Starting to Color

As far as plans for today, I wanted to take Ann up to Donner Summit/Pass so that she could take in the views and also learn a bit more about the significance of the pass in the history of this country. I had mentioned it the evening before and Kelley had volunteered to take us up there and play tour guide and hinted that maybe even Mark would come along before his shift at the restaurant.

Late morning, Ann and I drove off the mountain, which has some really steep grades that would be a big problem in winter without chains, down into Truckee proper to meet up with Mark and Kelley, a tale for the next post.