Playing Tourist at Lake Tahoe

It was a beautiful fall day in sunny Lake Tahoe.  There were very few tourists, which gave us a chance to see the locals relax.   

Thai Kitchen served up a wonderful meal.  We knew it was THE place as we entered because members of the county sheriff's department were eating there as well.

YUM!

Snowball fight? 

Forty-five of the eighty-one trapped members of the
Donner Party survived to live in California

This memorial is built in such a way that
visitors can visualize how deep the snow was in the winter
of 1846 by looking at the height of the rock pillar.

Now you may consider this bad form to talk about my yummy lunch when the next topic of my tourist day is Donner Memorial State Park, but there you have it. 

We saw a movie about the Donner Party (which was not much of a party at all) along with a school field trip group from Reno, Nevada.  Dave and I were much noisier than the children.  We could not help ourselves the movie was probably filmed in 1960 complete with blacked out spots.  It reminded me of grade school when I hoped the film would break so I could miss more class time and maybe even get early recess! The film may have been old, but it was informative. The Donner Party should not have taken "Hastings Cutoff," it did not save them 300 miles as they had hoped.  As one child opined in the movie, "get started as fast as you can and don't take short cuts." 

So often Dave and I get busy with work and neglect to enjoy the sights. 

We have been living full-time on the road for 5 1/2 years and this was our first visit to Lake Tahoe. I feel as though we have just gotten started and we don't take short cuts - hauling our house, are you kidding? We don't take short cuts.