North shore 😎

We had a perfect weather day to go explore the North Shore of Tahoe in late September. The sun was shining and the water was flat, which gave us an opportunity to paddle all the way to Nevada! We’d never done any paddling on the north shore, so momma was anxious to take advantage of the chance to knock out “two” (by the book we are following as a guide to how to most easily connect the lake) legs.

We started from Waterman’s Landing, which I just wrote about discovering as a landing spot in Tahoe. It was also a GREAT launch spot because we were close to the water for putting in, dogs were allowed on the beach there AND there were bathrooms (which are a big deal for momma since she doesn’t pee on bushes like us!).

We put in and headed to the left towards King’s Beach. Even though it was late September, there were still plenty of boats and waterskiers out on the lake. We skirted the edge and stayed out of everyone’s way. Around King’s Beach the water got SUPER shallow. So shallow that when we were going to stop momma got off the board while we were still quite a ways from the shore to walk us in and not hit the fin. It was super sandy and shallow a long ways out.

Being irresponsible, momma did not research where we could “legally” stop on a public beach but saw lots of other dogs on the shore, so we stopped where we thought it was fine. When we got home she looked it up and wasn’t sure we were technically in a spot that allowed dogs, but we didn’t bother anyone or leave anything behind so hopefully no-one got really fired up about it! We always try our best to respect the rules in Tahoe since we do love it so much and enjoy getting to spend time there!

After a decent break with Lolo getting to swim a bunch momma decided to keep going towards Nevada since the day was so nice. So we headed off towards Speedboat Beach. We weren’t EXACTLY sure what it was going to look like, because momma is more of a “let’s just see” and then will go back later to look it up. TOTALLY the opposite of our dad!

So anyways, once we started seeing all these big rocks in the water momma thought we must be near the beach. And we DID see a beach with what appeared to be a lot of signage near the edge of the water. So we didn’t really get very close because momma just figured it was a private beach saying “PRIVATE” which a lot of beaches are.

So we kept on going around the point that sticks out into the water – which was surprisingly not full of houses. We then started going up along the next shore and could see into the beaches of Incline Village and the beautiful water of Crystal Bay.

Since we’d already been out for a few hours and Lolo doesn’t like to spend all day on the SUP like I do, momma decided we should turn back around. Of course, it’s just as beautiful on the way back as it is on the way in! She was a bit more confident on the way back around where the “Speedboat” beach was because there were more people out lounging around on the rocks and the beach.

We stopped back at King’s Beach for another R&R to let Lolo get some good swim time in, and then spent some time back at Waterman’s Landing letting him swim before we loaded up the board and came home. It was our first day-trip to Tahoe in a long time, since we’d kind of started sticking to overnighters (at a minimum) over the summertime.

Now that we’ve got a couple of North Shore legs done, we have to figure out how to get all the way through the Incline Beach section. It sounds like those beaches are private – for residents only – but perhaps if we are at a hotel or AirBnB we will be allowed to access the beach to put in and complete the north shore legs of our Tour de Tahoe!