Crater Lake/ Lake Tahoe/Yosemite/Jackson

Several months ago Kris made reservations for 2 of Mom's Condos in Tahoe Village at Heavenly, Stateline, Nevada. The Tighe's took one Condo and the Kammeyer's occupied the other Condo. We had a wonderful week all of us together. Meals and cooking was shared and we found the week to be very relaxing for all.

James and I left Troutdale on Sunday, September 28th. We drove along the Clackamas River and enjoyed the river and beautiful fall colors. The day was gorgeous! We met up with the Tighe's at Crater Lake in Southern Oregon.



James and I.










Brent, Kristine, Alex and Ryan Tighe.














Kathleen and Kristine.












We brought the tandem with us and went on our first bike ride on one of the many paths around Lake Tahoe. We packed a lunch and ate it down by the lake. The day was sunny, not too warm and beautiful.


















We crawled up into a tree and asked a professional to take a picture. We rode about 18 miles from the Lake to Emerald Bay.





On October 1st we visited Virginia City, Nevada. It lies up in the hills past the capital of Carson City. It is hard to imagine that this city, which now only has about 1000 people used to have over 100 saloons and was busling 24 hours a day. Virginia City lost over 2000 buildings in the fire of 1875. It was interesting to walk along the wooded sidewalks and see a part of what the town looked like back then.










James and I rode the tandem on the west shore, out past Camp Richardson and Emerald Bay. We only rode 10 miles from Sugar Pine State Park to Tahoma.












Emerald Bay.







On October 3rd we drove to Yosemite with the Tighe's. When we lived in Jackson we were only 2 hours from Yosemite. We thought that we were about that distance while in Lake Tahoe. As it turned out, we were 4 hours from the Park. We stopped by a lake to have lunch. We were able to see colorful hills as well as waterfalls that were not as spectacular as they normally are because there has not been a lot of rain.



Lauren and Aaron










Katherine and Matt













Kammeyer Family

Aaron, Lauren, Kathleen, James, Katherine, Matt


We stopped and had a good dinner at "The Big Oak Restaurant". It didn't look promising, however we were adventurous and it was really quite good. We left the restaurant at 8 PM and had a very long ride home on windy roads. We arrived back in Tahoe at 11:30 PM. It was snowing as we pulled in. Shortly thereafter, just as we were getting ready for bed, the power went off and didn't come back on until 6 AM. We realized what 'pitch black' really was; we had no lights--except our cell phone light that we kept pushing to keep on.




On Saturday, October 4th we took the 2 hour ride down the Sierra's to our old stomping grounds. We had breakfast with some dear friends Linda and Larry Critchfield and their son Jared and his wife Sarah and their daughter Jenna. Jared was Aaron's best friend while we lived in Jackson. My good friend Lisa and her son Ethan joined us for a short time as did another good friend Joanne Dutra. It was wonderful to see all our friends and spend some time with them.


After visiting with our friends, we drove around Jackson and reminced about a part of our lives that was only 3 years long and yet made a significant impact on us. We keep in touch with our friends, and although we don't see them as often as we would like, when we do, we seem to pick up where we left off--our friendship is eternal. We drove past the townhouse at 29 Raggio Road where we lived when we first moved down from Seattle. We drove past the house on Buena Vista Drive. Jackson used to be a mining town and one of our favorite places to take people when they visited were the Kennedy and Argonaut tailing wheels. We brought the kids here once again. We also drove through Jackson and visited some of the shops.

















Kammeyer Family at the Kennedy Tailing Wheel.





















Downtown Jackson, California as well as the old Nationa Hotel established in 1852.




























On October 5th Matt, Katherine, James and I drove (once again) to Emerald Bay. The view was spectacular. That night Lauren and I drove Matt and Katherine to Reno where we put them on a plane back to Portland. I was stopped by a Nevada State Patrol on the way home because he didn't like the blue 'lights' that Aaron had on his car. James said that I made him defensive from the start because when he walked up I said, "I am so nervous, I have never gotten a ticket before...why did you pull me over?" He said, "Let me see your license and your registration and then I will tell you why I pulled you over." I thought they had to do this at the first? He turned out to be a nice officer, but imagine my horror when we pulled away and saw there there were 4 cop cars surrounding me as well as several cops standing around and a K9 unit! They must have thought they had someone really dangerous in that white VW Golf they pulled over.