We were invited to go to Lake Tahoe this weekend by a few of Olivia's former colleagues (and current friends). We stayed in a funky 1930s-era cabin rented to "friends and family" of some people who are neighbors of the people who own the cabin who some of our friends met on a mountain bike ride a few years ago. And, while there are nearly 7-degrees of separation between us and the cabin owners, we were very happy to spend the night there.
On Saturday we went on a hike in the Desolation Wilderness. Because most of California is on fire, it was smoky, but not so smoky that you can see the smoke in our carefully selected photos.
On our hike we discovered that the Northern Sierras have a lot of granite.
The granite seems to keep the lakes quite warm, as we demonstrate in this series of photos.
We also had the pleasure of spending time with our friend's super-cute kiddos. Here is Sierra smiling on her first trip to her name-sake mountain range.
Serendipitously, a portion of Chris' family was having a family reunion a mere 2.8 miles from our 1930s-era cabin. We spent Sunday afternoon playing with cousins and making dams on the Upper Truckee river.* Growing up in the Colorado Rockies, dam building was one of my favorite childhood activities and I made many dams with my uncle Bob and aunt Karla et al. It was great to do the same with my cousins...though in the end, it was Bob and I who were the most persistent and excited about our creation.
Other highlights of the trip were:
1. one hour of stop-and-go traffic on Highway 50 on our way home (oh wait, just kidding. That sucked).
2. A stop in Davis, California for Boat Sushi at Osaka Sushi (thanks iYelp!) and a visit to the David Food Coop. The Davis Food Coop was awesome, and Davis itself, and the Coop especially, are so full of an East-side Madison uber-vibe that Chris shed a few tears of homesickness on his way out of town (actually, no, he didn't) (yes he did) (no he didn't). In fact, for the first time in two years we were asked the following questions:
1. Are you Co-op members (answer, "No, sorry, we live in the city")
2. Is this onion organic or conventional? (answer, "Um, I wasn't paying attention" clerk's answer to that: "Well, since its small and kind of beat-up, I'm going to assume its organic.")
Thus, the Davis Food Coop had an incredible resemblance to Madison's Willy Street Coop and it was really nice and made at least one of us pretty homesick for Madison. However, to be completely honest, even if some super kynd free-range organic genetic engineer were to clone the Willy Street Coop and the Davis Food Coop and to stitch them together to make a chimeric uber-Coop it still wouldn't beat the Rainbow Grocery in terms of selection and bulk food options. However, it would beat Rainbow Grocery hands down in the categories of "YouTube movies filmed on location" and "Feel-good because you're a member" and "ease-of-parking".
Ok. Enough.
*The Upper Truckee River ecosystem was not "jacked-up" by the construction of our dam. We may have displaced a few wooly buggers but they can handle it.
4 comments:
OMG, I'm so confused, but still laughing. I always liked Willy Street Coop too, although couldn't bring myself to shop there on a regular basis because of..well, what I THINK you're saying here. But anyway!! Looks like a beautiful place and wonderful place to swim. I see Olivia was the only one swimming - was it cold? he he
hmm...sorry about the misunderstanding. I really like the Willy Street Coop. All I was saying is the Rainbow Grocery is bigger and has a better selection. This is to be expected, as San Francisco is bigger and kynder than Madison. However, all things being equal, I'd prefer to shop at Willy.
ps - I took a short swim.
OUCH! kynder, huh? interesting.
That water looks perfect. Looks liek a good time.
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