Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Tahoe: Friday

Getting to North Lake Tahoe was an all day affair on Friday. Here we go - I'll leave it up to you to see if these events are a made up story I created in my head or if it was real life last Friday.

We left the house by 9am to drop the dog off at camp & pick up the snowboard from Storage. We arrived to pick up Beth & Amy by 1030 and left the city. We made a stop in Oakland to pick up chains for our tires from my boss. Finally, we were on our way!


Then, Betsy text us to say that part of I-80 was closed. You take I-80 ALL THE WAY TO TAHOE. So, we marched on & called the highway hotline every half hour to check on the status. First, we stopped in Sacramento and ended up in "Old Town Sacramento" which looked like a land in DisneyWorld called "Old Gold Mining Town".

We thought we would find a place for lunch but did not. We tried another part of Sacramento and stopped in a place called "Bagel Time" which ironically hardly had any bagels available. Plus, they had rabbit on the menu. A bagel place that has rabbit? Ummm, no thanks! We got back in the car and stopped at Wendy's off the highway.

After we left Wendy's, the sky was darkening. We finally got to the spot on I-80 where it was closed & traffic was stopped. It wasn't raining or snowing but apparently as you headed into higher elevations, it was. So, we waited & we really were not stuck that long.


We headed up into the Sierra Mountains and it started to....hail. Yes, hail!




Eventually, we got to the spot on 80 where you have to put chains on the tires.

Erik & Amy handled it while I....supervised. haha




We began the long, slow trek at 30MPH to Truckee.

Finally, 7pm, we pull into Truckee. We stop at the grocery store and pick up food for dinner. We leave the grocery store and it is snowing, big time. We follow our map to the house. We cannot find the house.

We drive back to the grocery store to ask about how to get to the house. We drive back towards the house. No house. We call the rental agency & they give us some advice. We find this tiny street & bridge to the little area of our house. There is so much snow on the ground that when we pull into this little street, we get stuck.

Two feet of snow on the ground & the car is stuck in the snow. The Rental agency lady, Roxie, says we can't drive down the approx 1/4 mile to the house. We must walk. No, this is not a joke and no, we are not on Amazing Race TV show. So, we make one trip down to find the house & we can't. The piles of snow are SO high, we can't see house numbers.

Finally, we find the house. My fingers are so cold, I can hardly open the lock box to get the key. Finally, we get into the house. But, we must make multiple trips back to the car to get the stuff!

Back up hill. Down hill. To the car. To the house. Help Erik get the car unstuck. Fail. Go home & start dinner.

Me, drinking water straight from the faucet because I am so thirsty after that workout!

Sit down to eat dinner around 10pm. A cop arrives at the door to tell us that if we don't move our car, it will get towed. Erik trudges back to the car with the cop. He digs a new spot to park the car. The cop pulls him out of his stuck spot & drives away. Erik goes to move the car and it won't start, thanks to leaving the lights on to help dig out the new spot.


The amount of snow outside the house!!

Erik waits and waits and waves down a new cop for help. The new cop jumps the car and finally, Erik pulls it into the new spot. Trudges back down to the house. Midnight - Betsy, Greg, & Jun say they are almost to Tahoe. 2am. They arrive. 230. Greg has to go back up the hill to move his car. 3am. We finally go to bed.

Pretty much sums up our trip!! We hoped that the rest of the weekend was better!!

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