South Lake Tahoe CA - Day 14

Wednesday July 1st – Day 14

After breakfast we took a drive to see the famed Emerald Cove section of the lake. This is the most photographed area here and you’ve probably seen it on postcards or otherwise. It’s a beautiful cove that has a little island in the middle. We spent about an hour at the Inspiration Point Overlook that is the best spot for viewing the cove. There are also several kiosks with interesting info about the area, and two large telescopes to take a better look.

After our visit to this “must see” place it was back to camp to pack up all our gear for spending a day at the Camp Richardson beach. The beach is just across the road from us but is still a long walk when you’re carrying an ice chest, rafts, badminton set, backpacks, etc…

So we loaded up everybody (8 people) and everything and headed for the beach parking lot to unload. I took a picture of my Suburban with the rafts sticking out the back window because it reminded me of the old “woodie” wagons that always had the surfboards out the back too. There are still two more rafts inside the truck that you can’t see in the picture.

We had a great day at the beach as would be expected doing all the usual stuff and just having a nice relaxing day. The fresh air and water had a great affect on Martha who is feeling better now. An added bonus was that the beach side restaurant (The Beacon) had a really good live band playing music on the patio all day long, so we got to enjoy the rockin’ old tunes they were playing all day long.

After coming back to camp from the beach we had a dinner that we really enjoyed and haven’t done since our first stop at Sequoia. We built a campfire and roasted hot dogs and chili with cheese. Everybody was starving so it was that much better.

The adults kept the fire burning late into the night and enjoyed the glow of a warm fire, and that intangible good feeling you get by enjoying it and the cool night breeze lightly scented by surrounding pines.

As our fire dwindled down to glowing embers we were interrupted by the sound of the trashcan 5’ away from us being jostled. We looked over and straight into the face of a big fat raccoon! He looked at us as if to say “It’s cool, Don’t mind me!” I scared him off and immediately emptied the trash into the dumpster as I usually do before going to bed.

As I sat by the fire for a few final minutes, here he came again! This raccoon was determined to get into the trash. This time I just sat there because I knew the trash was empty and was enjoying his presence. After a quick sniff of the trash he knew the good stuff was gone so he climbed up onto the picnic table and took the last hotdog bun we forget to pack. I was able to snag a couple pictures of him eating before he finally disappeared into the darkness.

It was a funny ending to another enjoyable day.