Chicago and Lake Tahoe

Since 2007 is an "odd" year and we have a Lake Tahoe Timeshare week for the odd years, Tahoe was our destination, but this year we stopped for a few days in Chicago to visit our Daughter and her sisters and brothers.

One of the evenings we saw "Wicked" at one of the theaters in Chicago's theater district down town.

Another day we visited the Chicago Botanical Gardens. It was a warm sunny fall day. See the photos below. At the end of those photos are some of Penny's birthday party.

From Chicago we continued on to our timeshare, the Ridge Tahoe Resort. The "Ridge" is located on top of the mountain on the south side of lake tahoe, overlooking the Carson Valley. It's a long curving road getting up there, but quiet and cool. Nice hiking from the room and close to the lake and the desert, so it is a convenient starting point for a short hike.

Behind the tennis courts is the start of a trail that is not really marked too well, but it gets you started out through the woods and you can meander where your heart takes you. Eventually you can find the ski slope to get you back home.
I followed it up to a clearing, then headed further west to overlook the Carson Valley and some good views of the Ridge on the way back. See some pictures below.

Hike from the Ridge Tahoe

Our other interest is golf. I really like playing at the public course, Tahoe Paradise Golf Course, which is close to the lake tahoe airport on highway 50 in California side of the lake. The first half of these pictures are from there. It is a steep course playing through and around large pine trees.

The second half of these pictures is from the "desert": Carson Valley Golf Course. The course is kept quite green by using waste water treatment plant effluent from Carson City for irrigating it. It is a little long to make up for the flatness, and the views are amazing.

Tahoe Paradise Golf -- Carson Valley Golf Course

Sometime during our week at Lake Tahoe we are going to take a ride around the lake and stop at some of the overlooks.

On the west side of the lake there is a viewing window cut into the bedstream so you can see salmon and trout swimming in their natural environment.

Lake Tahoe Scnenic Overlooks

So this trip we were able to do a day trip to Yosemite National Park. We caught a bus in Lake Tahoe early in the morning. The bus picked us up early in the morning in Lake Tahoe then went back past our Timeshare and headed west back to California. It was a 4 or 5 hour ride to the park.

Yosemite is a designated a World Heritage Site. Yosemite is known for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves and biological diversity. The Tuolumne and Merced rivers begin in the park and flow west to the Central Valley.

The bus brought us along the viewing road in the park where it made short stops for pictures. Eventually he made a longer stop at a trail that brought you into the Sequoia Grove and gave us an hour or so to hike as far as we dared to get back to the bus. Remy went a little further than I expected her to in order to get back in time. I went ahead of her for a little bit and when I got back to her, I needed to hurry her along to get back to the bus in time.