Justin & I recently took a trip to California and I’ve been a little busy and haven’t gotten around to even looking at our vacation pictures yet.  I started and got through a few.

The first day of vacation is always filled with so much excitement, especially when you’re traveling somewhere brand new.  We flew into the Reno airport and thought we could grab lunch in town before heading towards the lake.  I didn’t know what to expect with Reno, I assumed it would be like a mini Vegas. Sorry, but I didn’t love it.  We drove through and checked it out a little, but didn’t see anything we needed to stop for, so we got out of there quickly.

We took the highway that goes up and over Mount Rose to reach the lake.  It was such a beautiful drive. We didn’t realize how bad the smoke was from the Yosemite fires until we started to climb.  The visibility was not so great, but we still enjoyed the drive.

This view was looking into Nevada.  Once we passed Mount Rose, we were heading downhill towards the lake.  We stopped and got lunch in Incline Village and enjoyed our first vacation beers of the trip.  We always trip and pick local to try new things.  You can clearly see how excited Justin was.

P.S. Both of those beers were good.  After lunch, we headed to a little look out spot on the lake and I was able to take it all in.  Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.  The smoke made it impossible to even see across the lake, but the color of the water and the clearness of it was incredible.

We made almost the full loop around the lake until we reached Tahoe City.  Our resort was the Squaw Valley Resort and it was a beautiful location in Olympic Valley.  We had a one bedroom condo with a fireplace and a deck.  I would love to stay somewhere on the lake as well, but this was perfect because there was so much to do right in our resort.  I would highly recommend this to anyone visiting the area and we can’t wait to go back in the winter time.

The drive around the lake isn’t more than a couple of hours, but it is one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever done.  You are up in the mountains looking down on the lake and then moments later, you are down on the beaches with mountains all around you.  I would love to bike around the lake at some point (if I could handle the hills.)  
I promise that I will be posting all of the good stuff in the next few weeks, this is easily the most uneventful day that we had.  We had a day that we visited Sacramento and Napa Valley, we hiked Emerald Bay & the Shirley Lake trail and then we were off to San Francisco.  Stay tuned for more
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A Compass Rose