Visiting Mark and Kelley in Truckee

We are just back from short visits to both Boise and Walla Walla. The Boise trip was a quick stay with friends Tim and Susan to deliver many cases of wine which they left with us when they moved to Boise. The Walla Walla trip was more of spendy vacation in which we dined out frequently and visited several wineries all the while celebrating Ann's 60th birthday. Just on the heels of these two drives and after the go-go-go hustle of our highly scheduled Walla Walla visit, our trip to Truckee would be an agenda-less relaxing time to catch up with our good friends Kelley and Mark. 

Before Ann and I got together in 2009, I met Kelley when she was a customer at my restaurant and a local resident. After I introduced Kelley to Ann, they became fast friends. Mark and I are just along for the ride! Sometime after this, Kelley and Mark moved to Showshoe, WV to work at the ski resort.

I feel like the last time that we laid eyes on them was in 2016 when they made a trip back to Virginia from Snowshoe. Before that, we visited with them at Snowshoe for a few days during our annual May restaurant closure in 2015. In a crazy twist of fate, we both moved west at exactly the same time in September of 2017. After closing the restaurant, Ann and I moved to Oregon so I could try my hand in the wine business. Mark and Kelley moved to Truckee to find work in the ski business.

In fact, we tried to rendezvous during our trip out somewhere in mid-America, but we just couldn't coordinate our routes. Ann and I headed north to see Michigan's Upper Peninsula, while Mark and Kelley power-drove a more central route aimed at getting them on I-80 into Reno and Truckee. Bottom line, it's been a long damned time since we saw each other.

Together Once More

After so much hustle recently, Ann and I left Bend and headed south in the direction of California with a plan to hang out, eat in frequently, and, as the name of this blog might imply, take each day as it came and do what we felt when we felt. Our dire need of relaxation drove me to bring food along, mainly pre-prepared, so that we wouldn't have to scramble for restaurant reservations or to find a reasonable grocery in unfamiliar territory.

Saturday morning, October 14, at first light, we roused ourselves, packed our perishables, and joined the southbound traffic on US 97. Seven and a half hours later, we arrived in Truckee, met up with Kelley and Mark, and began the process of relaxing. After three days of taking it easy while taking in the area, we headed back to Oregon on Wednesday the 18th. We had the greatest time and it was so fabulous to hook up with Kelley and Mark once again! The saga is laid out in the following posts.

Saturday October 14: Road Trip to Truckee
Sunday October 15: Easy Sunday in Truckee
Monday October 16: Change of Venue
Monday October 16: Airport Lunch and Donner Pass
Monday October 16: Tahoe Donner and Dinner on the Town
Tuesday October 17: Cruising Lake Tahoe

Tuesday October 17: Wooden Boats of Lake Tahoe

In retrospect, it's a good thing we were never in a hurry. Starting with intense eclipse-related traffic on Saturday morning, we would spend a lot of time at standstills in traffic. In these shoulder weeks after the summer crowds have departed the Tahoe area and before the skiers arrive post-Thanksgiving, the ring road around Lake Tahoe is under construction, with single lane traffic and other disruptions at very many points around the lake. Even when we were headed back to Bend, we encountered a CalTrans road project in the Modoc National Forest that had us sitting still for many minutes. You could look at all these delays as annoyances or you could see them as I do: a perfect metaphor for our relaxing vacation in which we had no schedule and no agenda.

Waiting on CalTrans: a Perfect Metaphor for This Trip

Truckee: Wooden Boats of Lake Tahoe

This is the final post in the series about our visit to see our friends Kelley and Mark in Truckee, CA, a wrap up from our cruise on Lake Tahoe. On our final day in the area, Kelley had arranged with a friend a tour of the lake on his boat. By stroke of good fortune, we got caught in an endless series of road construction projects and were late. And in another stroke of good fortune, Dan, the boat's owner and captain, thought that the water might be too low at our original pick-up point in Tahoe Vista, so Plan B was for us to meet at the Gar Woods pier in Carnelian Bay, further west. In getting there, we encountered still more road delays, ultimately arriving much closer to noon than to our original 11am departure time.

This delay that would typically have been annoying and frustrating was actually wonderfully and serendipitously fortuitous. Just as we boarded Dan's boat at the end of the long pier, we heard an unusual noise that sounded like a brief toot on a steam whistle. I looked up to find where the noise had originated only to see a gorgeous mahogany boat coming quite slowly and serenely in our direction on the glassy lake.

Until that point, I never connected the name Gar Woods with the pre-World War II manufacturer of mahogany boats, Garfield Wood, several of whose boats I have seen on Seneca Lake at Watkins Glen, NY. I also never connected being at Lake Tahoe with seeing more gorgeous watercraft of the wooden boat era. I should have connected Tahoe as the playground of the ultra-wealthy with wooden boats, but I didn't. In any case, I did lay my eyes on three beautiful watercraft despite it being very late season when most of the boats are in storage for the winter.

Thunderbird

As the 55-foot gleaming mahogany and polished stainless steel Thunderbird passed us, I swear I gawked open-mouthed fanboy-style while furiously snapping photos with one hand while giving the crew high signs with the other. I could feel the twin 1100-horsepower Allison V-12 aircraft engines (think P-38 and P-51) intensely rumbling as she crept alongside us, the crew all wearing headsets.

The Thunderbird was bringing a group of passengers to dine at Gar Woods restaurant, no relation to the Gar Wood boat manufacturer, rather in homage. Reportedly, it takes $5000 an hour with a two-hour minimum to arrive for lunch in such style aboard this legendary yacht. Unaffordable for Ann and me, but we owe great thanks to those folks whose bank account allowed us to see this phenomenal craft up close!

The arguably most famous and most admired wooden boat in the world and valued at about 5.5 million dollars, the Thunderbird is docked at the boathouse at Thunderbird Lodge on the east side of the lake in what is now the Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park. Commissioned by PG&E heir George Whittell in 1936 and then sold to and rebuilt by casino magnate Bill Harrah in 1962, The Thunderbird is now owned by a non-profit, the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society.

Wild Goose II

As we cruised east from Gar Woods back in the direction of Tahoe Vista, I happened to spy the Wild Goose II moored alongside a dock. She is a 36-foot mahogany boat for charter tours out of Tahoe Vista that was commissioned in 2006 based on the design of the original Wild Goose.

Sapphire

Because of a road construction project right in front of the Gar Woods pier, Mark could not park his truck roadside and had to find a spot off a side road a couple hundred yards away. After we had debarked and said goodbye to Dan, we walked back to the truck. Quite unexpectedly, a guy was towing the Sapphire into storage with an aircraft tractor. As she sat on the side of the street, we walked by the gleaming 1998 Hacker-Craft 24-foot wood epoxy craft.

Before reading up on these fantastic boats that we had the opportunity to see firsthand, I did not realize that wooden boats are a huge thing at Tahoe. The lake is home to the annual Lake Tahoe Concours d’Elegance, arguably the most acclaimed and prestigious wooden boat show in North America. That would be something to see.

Truckee: Cruising Lake Tahoe

This is the penultimate post in the series about our visit to see our friends Kelley and Mark in Truckee, CA. On Tuesday, our final full day in Truckee, Kelley had arranged for a ski patrol friend of hers, Dan, to show us around the lake on his boat, which he rents out for cruises. All we had to do was pick up the gas bill. Deal!

Blue Skies and Glassy Water: A Phenomenal Day on Lake Tahoe

We were on vacation, so we were not really feeling pressed to be anywhere at any given time. Still, we had a nominal departure at Lake Tahoe at 11am so Ann and I arrived at Mark and Kelley's around 10:15. Kelley was in the middle of putting together her delicious sandwiches (baguette, Boursin, genoa salami, and fresh spinach), so I jumped in and helped her spread the slightly ornery Boursin on the bread while she assembled the sandwiches.

Meanwhile, Mark was packing the lunch goods and drinks into the cooler. I guess that we got away from their house bound for the lake about 20 minutes late, but I felt like we were on perfect Truckee time, 11am being more of a suggestion rather than a plan. As we piled into Mark's truck and headed south towards the lake, we could see that the day was developing beautifully, with bluebird skies, no wind to speak of, and glorious October temperatures.

After witnessing the whitecaps on Donner Lake yesterday, I was a touch apprehensive about a cold and damp boat ride on an uncomfortably choppy lake. No need to worry. Today's weather was turning out to be the most spectacular ever! We would have phenomenal weather and the vast lake all to ourselves in this post-tourist season when most boats are dry-docked for the winter. Spectacular is much too lame a word to describe our experience.

Our original embarkation point was to be the docks at Tahoe Vista just west of Kings Beach where we hit the ring road around the lake, Lake Blvd. As if we were not already late, traffic was at a standstill along Lake Blvd. because of construction projects in full force in the shoulder season between lake season and ski season. Like I said earlier, we were on Truckee time. It's kind of like Bend time and I imagine like in many other ski towns.

On arrival at a parking area near the docks, Kelley reached out to Dan who feared that the water level at the docks was too shallow for his boat, so they agreed to change the pick-up point to further west on the the north lakeshore, at Gar Woods pier in Carnelian Bay. Naturally, we encountered a lot more construction on the way there and a construction project prohibited us from parking near the pier. Ultimately, Mark let us off at the pier and continued on to find a parking spot a few hundred yards away while the three of us walked to the end of the pier to meet Dan, quite near noon as opposed to the original rendezvous time of 11.

This delay that would typically have been annoying and frustrating was actually wonderfully and serendipitously fortuitous. Just as we boarded Dan's boat, we heard an unusual noise that sounded like a brief toot on a steam whistle. I looked up to find the source of the noise to see a gorgeous mahogany boat, the 55-foot Thunderbird, coming quite slowly and serenely in our direction on the glassy lake. Thunderbird would prove to be the first of only two boats that we would see on the water all day. I would take a lot of photos of Thunderbird, most of which are in a subsequent post.

Thunderbird Arrived as We Departed

The following photos are in the order that I shot them as we made our way along the north shoreline past Incline Village though Crystal Bay to the east shoreline past Sand Harbor and past the Thunderbird Lodge where Thunderbird moors to Secret Beach where we anchored for a time. It getting to mid-afternoon and Mark needing to get to work in the late afternoon, we started back from Secret Beach in a direct line across the lake. Kelley would use this opportunity to wake surf for a few minutes before Dan put the throttle forward and zoomed us across the glassy lake, the only boat in sight, to the pier at Gar Woods where we left Mark's truck.

Prescribed Burn Just Lit at Burton Creek

West Shoreline

Tiny House with Funicular to Even More Tiny Boathouse

East Shore: Undeveloped Park Land

At Sand Harbor Beach

The Bear Scratch Below Herlan Peak; Some Nuts Ski This (Dan!)

Thunderbird Lodge Boat House

Thunderbird Lodge with Modern Eyesore Addition (on right)

Someone Decided Being Naked in Chilly Water Was Sane

Moocher at Secret Cove

Kelley's Delicious Sandwiches

You Go Girl!

Ripping Back, Tunes Bumping

Fun and Games with Shutter Speed
Droplets in our Wake, 1/3200 sec @ f 5.6

Back at the Gar Woods pier, we said goodbye to Dan and started our journey back to Truckee, this time continuing on west to take CA 89 back to Mark and Kelley's. Ann and I were both extremely happy at our experience on the lake and extremely tired. As mellow as our schedule had been over the past few days, it still took a toll on us. Now in our 60s, we are neither of us as go-go-go as we were even five years ago and we wanted to rest before hitting the road back to Oregon at dawn, so we did not linger long.

I was quite sad to say goodbye to Mark and Kelley at their house just before Mark left for the restaurant and I was also equally elated to have seen them and to have spent so much time with them after so much time apart. They're the kind of friends that when we reconnect, it's just like we have not been apart.

Ann and I headed back up the steep mountain to Tahoe Donner to pack our belongings for the trip back in the morning. Dinner, before an early turn-in time, was leftover pasta and meat sauce from Sunday night. I went to bed with a full stomach and a happy heart having experienced a phenomenal visit to California.

The following morning, we would head east on I-80 to Reno just at first light with the blazing sun in our eyes. After a touch of rush hour traffic on the interstate we turned northwest and headed back through California to Klamath Falls. The trip due north home to Bend was uneventful. Our travel lust sated, we were once again back in Bend for an extended period for the first time in a month or longer.