We arrived home from DC on Wednesday night. Not being ones to gather moss, we were on the road again less than 36 hours later for a quick weekend trip up US-395N to the Lake Tahoe area for the wedding of our friends' son.
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| This is what ChatGPT gave me when I asked for a rolling stone with no moss 🤣 |
Friday, October 25
Good thing our bodies are still on Eastern time because we had to leave the house at 6:30AM this morning. Why so early? It's a 7.5-hour drive to Carson City (450 miles), so we needed to get moving to make it to the Nevada State Capitol before 5:00PM, plus hit a couple of stops for stamps along the way.
We arrived at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center in Lone Pine, CA around 9:45AM. According to the National Park Travelers Club database, there used to be stamps here for Death Valley NP and Manzanar NHS, but we were out of luck. Both gone. 😢 Regardless, this was a good opportunity to get out of the car and stretch our legs for a bit.
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| Looking west at the Sierras and Alabama Hills |
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| Mt. Whitney is the tallest peak in the U.S. outside of Alaska |
We stopped again an hour later in Bishop, this time for an early lunch at Erick Schat's Bakkerÿ. I could have stayed here and eaten samples of their bread all day. As it was, we bought a loaf of bacon cheese bread to take with us.
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| BLT with avocado and roast beef with split pea soup - these are huge half sandwiches! |
After lunch, we continued about 40 miles north on US-395 to Mammoth Lakes, getting off the main highway to head into town on CA-203. The Inyo National Forest Welcome Center had an old stamp for Devils Postpile NM, which we visited when we were last here in 2009.
The final segment of the trip to Carson City took us about 2.5 hours to drive (135 miles). We arrived at the capitol around 3:30PM, but the building was closed. 😱 We didn't know that today was Nevada Day, a state holiday on the last Friday in October celebrating Nevada's admission to the Union on October 31, 1864. Luckily, we were able to get the security guards on duty to let us in and give us (um, me!) the state capitol stamp.
Saturday, October 26
The wedding wasn't until later this afternoon, so we headed over to see Lake Tahoe first thing because neither of us has ever been here before. We drove south and took the long way around instead of the winding route over the Kingsbury Grade because a) I didn't want to get car sick, and b) we could also collect a few more counties. 😁
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| 100 miles |
It took us about an hour to get to Inspiration Point. There was frost on the car when we left the hotel, and it was still a little chilly when we hopped out to take pictures around 9:15AM. 🥶
Then we drove to the Emerald Bay State Park Lookout and paid $3 for hourly parking. Now we can say that we've been to the three deepest lakes in the United States: Crater Lake in Oregon (1943'), Lake Tahoe in California/Nevada (1645'), and Lake Chelan in Washington (1486').
It's too bad that we didn't have more time to go all the way around the lake, but we'll save that for another visit. We took a different route on the way back through South Lake Tahoe, CA and Stateline, NV. It was very easy to tell when we crossed the border because the casinos were literally built right next to the line. US-50 brought us back towards Carson City, where we filled up with gas at Costco.
As an aside, did you know that US-50 stretches from Sacramento, CA to Ocean City, MD? Another interesting tidbit is that we have traveled on three different sections of US-50 just in this year alone. Besides today's route, we were on US-50 from Lebo, KS to Strong City, KS in May, and again between Chantilly, VA and Fairfax, VA just a few days ago.
From Costco, we went to Mormon Station State Historic Park in Genoa, NV. It was originally built in 1851 as a trading post along the Carson Route of the California Trail. Emigrants on their way to the gold fields of California had to travel hundreds of miles across the Great Basin Desert before reaching the Carson Valley. By the time they arrived at Mormon Station, weary travelers were out of supplies, and their livestock were weak from lack of water and grass. Here they could restock what they needed in order to complete the final leg of their journey through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It also served as one of the 190 stations along the route of the Pony Express. (And yes, we stopped here because the museum had passport stamps for the California and Pony Express National Historic Trails - ha!)
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| The original trading post burned down in 1910 but was reconstructed in 1947 as a museum. |
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| Great fall color! |
We still had plenty of time for a tasty lunch at Minden Meat and Deli before going back to our hotel room to get ready for the wedding.
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| Western sandwich (roast beef, cheddar, onion rings, BBQ sauce) and turkey pesto panini |
So glad we could come to celebrate the marriage of J and S! And it was especially fun to see many friends from our previous church!
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| Congrats to the happy couple... |
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| ...and to the parents of the groom! |
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