Pictures of Fall Leaves Near Lake Tahoe and at Spooner Lake Trail

Another Look at Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe, California

My sister came to town this weekend, and we spent the day at Lake Tahoe and drove clear around the lake. I also spent some time hiking on Lam Watah Trail near Nevada Beach, which is close to the casinos. We stopped at Emerald Bay, and I took some pictures there.

Later on we went to the Engelbert Humperdinck concert which was at the Silver Legacy. This is the fourth time I have seen him. We managed to get an excellent seat. I should have brought my camera along. Towards the end of the show, we went right up at the stage; however, he didn't sign our tickets. He left shortly afterwards.

Lighthouse Rubicon Trail Video

Here is some video footage of my hike of today:

Lighthouse Rubicon Trail

The Lighthouse from the trail below.








Some shots of Lake Tahoe.





A closeup of the Lighthouse.





The Lighthouse, which is smaller than an outhouse.











Today I went to D.L. Bliss State Park near Emerald Bay on the California side of Lake Tahoe. I hiked down the Rubicon Trail to the Lighthouse, which looks like an outhouse, to be perfectly honest, and then I continued around the loop. I started hiking on the trail to Emerald Bay, but about a half mile down I saw a little bear, larger than a cub but nonetheless small, tearing up a log for food, I guess. Since I didn't want to tempt fate, I walked back up the trail. Unfortunately I didn't get my cameras out to get a still or video of it. By the time I thought of doing so, the bear saw me.

This guy, however, had an even closer encounter with a bear.

Personal Stuff

I decided to drive up to Tahoe City, California, right on Lake Tahoe today and ride my bike about 25 miles round trip, which is a good workout for me considering my age and the fact the elevation is 6,200 feet. Some of the bike trail is right next to the shore, but there are also some McMansions and crap along the way. The one thing I don't care much for is the fact you have to cross from one side of the road to the other several times on the path. In any case, it is very beautiful and scenic. I didn't take any pictures this time, and the lake had haze over it. It still felt good though to cycle right next to the lake and get halfway cool.

The kicker is when I returned back to the car, I looked at the sign and realized I could have gone another five or six miles and reached the absolutely beautiful Emerald Bay. It would have been doable if I had done it. The round trip would have been 34 miles.

I may head back up at the lake area later this week and go for a hike. Maybe I will go over to Emerald Bay if the height doesn't scare the shit out of me.

I don't do these Tahoe rides very often; in fact, it has been years since I've done a Tahoe ride, and it was always on the Nevada side. The California side is better in terms of not hitting the traffic although it isn't as beautiful as the Nevada side (Emerald Bay excepted). Besides, I hate to have to take my bike apart and put it in the backseat. I shouldn't do it anyway because it damages the brake cables. The next car I get, which should be shortly if I am reinstated on my job or decide to take a settlement if I get a better job than what I had or if I win the $88 million Mega Millions lottery, I will get a bumper carrier for the bike. Rooftop carriers aren't very practical in my situation.

These pictures of wildflowers are from Rancho San Rafael around the Evans Canyon area.





Spooner Lake near Lake Tahoe.




Towards South Lake Tahoe.

Miscellaneous.

For 47 million you can buy this monstrosity at Incline Village, Nevada.
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As many as 10,000 could be dead as a result of a cyclone centered in Burma, also called Myanmar by those who want the rest of us to look it up on a map. The current death toll is around 4,000.
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Lake Tahoe.

I went up there today to take my mind off of things.

As the World Turns.

Everything I learned about war I learned from my cats. (Joao Silva, NYT)

A snip:

But that lay ahead when I arrived at the Baghdad airport one recent summer day with the crate carrying the four cats. Getting them that far had been a saga, finding Iraqi health officials ready to issue and counterstamp fit-to-travel documents; negotiating the 12 hazardous miles to the airport through an obstacle course of checkpoints where soldiers and policemen have been trained to destroy on sight any “suspicious package”; and persuading wary airline personnel to clear the cat crate for loading.

The process took hours, and left me exhausted, sitting on the terminal’s marble floor beside the cats, as the time for boarding approached.

All about was hubbub, with hundreds of angry, fearful Iraqis struggling to secure their own passage out. The cats seemed terrified, so I fell once more into my anthropomorphic mode, offering them a quiet discourse on what lay ahead — the 3,000-mile air journey, detention in the quarantine center and, ultimately, liberation into a green and pleasant land where they would be full citizens, never again wanting for shelter, warmth and food.

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Speaking of cats, a tiger once believed to be extinct in the wild in China has been spotted.

I don't mean the tiger is spotted instead of striped, but that it has been seen for the first time in more than twenty years.
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Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier 60 years ago.
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Since NONE of the area surrounding Lake Tahoe, whether in the north or in the south, in the east or in the west, EVER should have been allowed to have been developed in the first place, it's no surprise that even the allegedly "blue-collar" South Lake Tahoe is being turned into Incline Village South.

Most of the homes in the south shore area are now vacation homes, according to an article sometime ago in the San Francisco Chronicle (about 60 percent).
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Angora Fire.

Those living and working at the North Shore are a bit concerned about the impact the fire will have on tourism, despite the fact the fire was at the other end of the lake.

There is plenty of blame to go around regarding the fire.

The article kind of skirts around the basic problem, and that's the fact greed is at the root of it.

The entire area around the lake should have NEVER been allowed to have been developed. It should have been made into a national park. What has been done to it is nothing short of criminal. That's why I get pissed off reading about the fire and have perhaps slightly less sympathy for the victims there than I do over those who were victimized by Hurricane Katrina.

Angora Fire.

More people will be allowed to return home now that the fire is about 55% contained.

The Angora Fire.

Some 2,000 residents were forced to evacuate when the fire surged yesterday afternoon.

The latest developments can also be found here.

Human Stupidity

as at the root of fires like the Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

This is what happens when clearcutting of trees from the Gold Rush era to the obscene development of the region in recent decades is allowed. Lake Tahoe should NEVER have been allowed to have been developed. It's like having the assholes take over Yosemite, or take over the Grand Canyon, or take over Crater Lake. It should have been a national park, not a fucking playground for the megarich.

It's a travesty, and I have to laugh at locals who sport "Keep Tahoe Blue" bumperstickers on their cars or SUVs when they have homes up there which helped create the goddamned mess.

Now the Angora fire has spread.

Early this afternoon I went hiking--yes, hiking--up Galena Creek Trail, which is a ways off Highway 431 on the way to Incline Village (the north shore of Lake Tahoe). The air was smoky, but not too bad as I was hiking the trail behind the obscene McMansions of Montreaux (the wealthiest part of Reno). About an hour later, as I was walking back, the sky was more full of smoke, and that must have been around the time the fire jumped over to Highway 89.

By the way, the south part of the lake is hardly working class, despite nonsense from sites like Democratic Underground. The average home in that area is "affordable" if you're upper middle class: In an article in today's Reno Gazette-Journal, it pointed out the average home was over $400,000. This isn't a poverty-stricken area, not even the south shore.

The east shore and north shore are the most obscene of all, with homes averaging over a million dollars. And the worst of the worst is along Lakeshore Drive in Incline Village. You can't see the goddamned lake because of the fucking mansions blocking the view. You are not allowed to enter the beaches because they are "private." It just pisses me off just thinking about it. It sounds cruel, but it's too damned bad the fire didn't start there and rid the world of that extravagant shit. As you recall, I used to post pictures of those eyesores which came on the real estate market in the days when my scanner worked.

Much if not most of the area surrounding the lake is public land (including Sand Harbor and the spectacular Emerald Bay), but the entire region surrounding the lake should have been. Now Lake Tahoe is paying the price with the damage to its environment.

As the World Turns.

The air around the Truckee Meadows will probably continue to be lousy, thanks to a couple of fires, the worst being near the southern part of Lake Tahoe.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire area surrounding the lake should be razed and returned back to the wild, especially Incline Village, the playground of the filthy rich. Lake Tahoe can't support all of the development, and whoever it was in the 1950s who made the decision to develop the area should have been taken out and shot.

Lake Tahoe should have been made into a national park. As it is, Lake Tahoe is a reminder of what the privatizers would have done to the national park system if they had had their way.

It would be Lake Tahoe writ a million times larger.
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