Few days have passed but I will make sure you are caught up on all the 2Westwardhos gossip in the next few paragraphs. 

It was a long drive to Lake Tahoe and we knew it wasn't going to happen in one day. We wanted to drive as far as we could so basically took out the AAA book and picked the nearest town once we were sick of being in the car. Williams won our business and for $84, we had a decent stay in a very quirky hotel that had a monster restaurant/bar/deli/gelato/bakery/grocery store. Sorry, but "general store" just wasn't going to do it justice. It was a sleepy little town full of immigrants that work the rice fields in the local county. It's also a big hit for the birds and duck migration. Apparently, if you're a bird watcher or duck hunter you'd probably want to put this on your route. If I lived here, I would utilize the combination of the agriculture and birds and open a restaurant called "Fowl-Rice". But, I don't live here.  

Lake Tahoe was a few hours away so we got there just in time to eat a picnic lunch in the Truckee Visitor's Center and get in a good snow shoeing. Truckee is a cute, old hippie town and had we been working probably would have spent more time there shopping, eating and people watching. But, that's not the case so off to Donner Lake we went to take in a gorgeous, sunny afternoon in the snow.  The town of Donner and Donner Lake are both named in memory of family vacation gone bad. Apparently, the Donner's, and another family and their workers (89 in total) set out on an expedition in the late 1800s from Springfield, Illinois through the Sierra Nevada.  Unfortunately, they took a few wrong turns (I'm sure Mr. Donner was leading and didn't want to ask directions). The journey took a lot longer than expected. They ran into some bad weather and since they weren't prepared for this, many ended up dying. And if that wasn't bad enough, some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism. There were several attempts to reach the Donner expedition and after a year, a rescue crew finally reached the remaining members. 41 people died...31 others were eaten. I think it was quite honorable to dedicate a lake and town to these brave people.  I also think it was wise not to include a restaurant named Donner's. 

After our snow-shoeing, we headed around Lake Tahoe and it was breathtaking. We were on the north end and drove all along the east side to get down to South Tahoe for lodging. I wish I could say it was an uneventful ride but I did get pulled over by the Po Po. I was speeding. Hey, the speed limit changes from 35 to 45 to 35 to 45 the whole ride so I just got tired of trying to figure it out. I was so grateful the nice officer pulled me over to explain it. And I'm also grateful Lisa was taking pictures through the back window of him writing up my citation so I will always have that little keepsake. 

We finished off Tahoe with another snow-shoe outing and drove all around the lake. We went up to the California-Nevada border to check out the Cal-Neva Casino, owned by Frank Sinatra in the 60s. Supposedly, it was a Rat Pack hang-out sprinkled with some John Kennedy/Marilyn Monroe trysts in the cottages. The problem with the Cal-Neva is it has not been updated since around 1964.  I would put money down (no pun intended) that the carpeting hasn't been changed...EVER.  Certainly none of the furniture or pictures have been updated. And, it was empty except for the dealers and the slot-machine repairmen. I'm unclear what he was repairing as I believe if that one machine remained broken until somebody torched the place, nobody would notice since they could move along to one of the other 350 machines not being used. Yes, we are in a recession but to see an empty casino that used to be owned by Ol' Blue Eyes is down-right depressing. I mean, The Drifters were headlining on Saturday night and I'm not sure how they will draw the chain-smoking-oxygen-tank-carrying high rollers in the audience.  If it was a free show, it would be overpriced. Lisa said it was the most depressing thing she's seen on our entire trip. It was so bad, she wouldn't even let us eat our leftover picnic lunch in the parking lot. Not to mention it would've been weird sitting in the virtually empty parking lot in our ski clothes eating leftover food. So, we drove over to the beach where nobody could see us.