West shore legs

Back in September my momma’s in-laws came to visit. Momma doesn’t love having in-laws visiting because of the pressure to “entertain” while they are there. This is the first time they have visited us in California, so she and dad made a plan to take a weekend trip to Tahoe, where she thought at least they could get to see something really amazing while taking the pressure off her to “entertain,” and if they didn’t want to go see anything we could still at least go out on our own to adventure!

However, this couldn’t be a normal overnighter like we normally do, because they don’t camp. So we rented a cute little house on AirBnB on the west shore. This was convenient for momma to log a couple more legs on our “tour de Tahoe” adventure.

The first day we drove up and hiked around up at Mount Rose area to the amazing views down to lake Tahoe before we could “check in”. Once we checked in momma took Lolo and I immediately down to the lake to catch the sun setting – there was a path right out the back of the cabin that was less than 2 minutes walk to the lake. Perfection!

There was also a hammock at the lake that everyone but me seemed to love.

The first morning momma and I woke up to go paddling. It was cold and early but the wind forecast wasn’t awesome for the day, so it was kind of our only chance. We started out with Lolo too, but it was just so windy and splashy that momma turned around to drop him back off because he really doesn’t like those kind of conditions. Plus, it gave dad a good excuse to play with Lolo and keep him entertained – mostly by swimming in the freezing cold lake all morning.

Momma and I went again headed to the south to see how far we could get given the current conditions and predicted conditions for worsening wind. We were just a bit south of dollar point where we were launching from, and made it to a unique-looking structure in Tahoe City. We don’t really know what or where it is, but you can see it in the picture behind me.

Here in this little area we finally had some calm-enough wind that we could take a few pictures!

Now, at this time – as was the case essentially all summer – I was on strict orders to keep my foot dry. And we did, very successfully until I jumped off a second too early when we were landing back at the beach. Let me tell you, momma was not happy about that!

After she dried out and re-wrapped my foot, we took a day trip over to Chimney Beach area on the Nevada side. Because the winds were forecast to be 10-15 mph all day, momma decided not to bring the SUP with us. Of course you know this meant the water on the east side was just perfection.

As soon as we got to Chimney Beach I promptly jumped into the water, which is something I’ve literally never done at Lake Tahoe. Momma was hot under the collar since I’d just had my foot re-wrapped. But she still took pictures of me enjoying the lake. I tried to tell her if she ever took us to Tahoe in the HOT weather I’d be happy to swim, but my injuries and the nature of our adventures has us frequenting the lake shore during the “off” season for swimming.

Momma was so sad we weren’t paddling out there, look at what a pretty day it was!

Just because I could, I went swimming AGAIN down by Secret Cove.

It was a gorgeous day and a wonderfully cool night. We were leaving the next day and momma thought everyone might want to go paddling in kayaks, because she thinks that everyone wants to see Lake Tahoe like she does.

However, the in-laws and dad did not want to go paddling, so we decided to do another early-morning tour just by ourselves.

This time we went north from our launch site, around Dollar Point up to Waterman’s Landing, which is where she planned to get rentals for the in-laws to paddle out from. It was a wonderfully calm (and again, very cool) morning but we warmed up fast with the sun. We only saw a handful of people out and got to enjoy some very cool lake scenery both on the sore as the leaves were starting to get a hint of color, and also down below with some very cool rock formations.

The west shore of Lake Tahoe is where we still have the most legs left to do to complete our circumnavigation, because finding launching spots where you can take a dog out are a little bit tricky. The land on the west shore is not as dog-friendly and it is a lot more residential. So we were lucky we got to do a couple of legs from our rental property, which also leads momma to think we may have to try to do one or two more that way, too. We will have to see!