This year for momma’s birthday, we took a three-day weekend trip to her favorite place in the entire world, Lake Tahoe. Our favorite campground there had just opened for the season, so we were happy to get a few nights of sleeping outside in the cool spring air with daytime weather that was nothing short of perfect!
The perfect weather meant that momma and I had some serious work to do on our Tour de Tahoe. Having daddy along means Lolo doesn’t have to come with us, so we can go on really big paddles without him needing to take breaks more frequently than either of us prefer!
Momma decided that we would go start working on the west side of the lake where we honestly hadn’t put in a ton of effort after finishing our Emerald Bay and D.L. Bliss paddles last year. The paddles off those state parks are just so stunning and we knew a lot of the rest of it would be “boring” by Tahoe standards, – which is to say it’s a lot more boat harbors than just natural landscape.
The lighting is terrible here, but we love the patriotism of this boat house!
Our plan this Saturday morning was to start at Chambers Landing and head south, so that we could paddle along the stretch of Sugar Pine Point State Park, which was supposed to be a really, really pretty section.
We got up super early and drove through South Lake Tahoe and past Emerald Bay to get to Chambers Landing. However, the only thing momma could find was a locked gate. So she kept driving north and pulled over in Homewood after she was certain she had missed the turn only to see a public beach access sign next to a huge (like HUGE) boathouse. She pulled in and asked about unloading there and they were gracious and let us take the board off. We went back out and parked on the highway and then put in right there at Obexers. It was further than we planned, but that was OK, we still hadn’t paddled this section anyways!
It was momma’s birthday on this morning, and she felt really lucky to have such nice weather and all the time we needed to get our paddle done. We made our way eventually to Chambers Landing, which is quite obvious, and then continued south for our intended SUP along the edge of Sugar Pine Point. It was a very pretty area (especially for the west shore) and because the lake levels are high right now, we got to paddle over and around some massive boulders just off the shore.
There is a huge, lovely beach there (not for doggos of course), but I can see why Sugar Pine Point got its name with all that sand!
As we rounded the corner of Sugar Pine Point momma thought she recognized the bay we were then heading into as Meeks’ Bay. She pulled up her Google Maps on her phone and realized that it was indeed what she thought. So here we were with an opportunity to link up from our previous high point of Meeks’ Bay when we came from D.L. Bliss last year.
She decided we were just going to go for it, so in we went, all the way to the same beach we SUPed to last year. The National Forest campground and day use areas were not yet even open for the season, so it worked out really well for us. We had intended on trying to camp there to get access to paddling at some point in the future, but now we won’t have to worry about it (because the sites look a little closer than we prefer when given the choice to camp in the Lake Tahoe Basin!).
Once we took a short break in Meeks’ Bay we headed back all the way to Obexers where we put in. We were not planning such a long paddle, but really made big progress on our big goal!
Momma really loves paddling during the more “off season” of Lake Tahoe, since we don’t have to deal with much boat traffic at all. Being off season also means she is a lot pickier about the wind conditions (especially in the winter and spring) so we get the most pristine looking photos and opportunities to see the bottom of the lake!
Olaf 