And so the Sun Sets...

We enjoyed 3 nights of amazing sunsets over Lake Tahoe.

 Night one.  The best picture, but the quickest view as we were headed to a late dinner.

Night two.  The coldest night and longest time we spent playing on the beach waiting for it.

Night three.  Delia was tired, so she relaxed at the hotel with Dave while Ella and I walked hand and hand to the beach.  We cuddled, talked about life, laughed and oohed and aahed-- I loved sharing this with her!

And so with this last vacation, the sun sets on another awesome summer.  Thanks for all the memories, Summer of '13!

SUP (Stand Up Paddle-Boarding)

After watching others stand up paddle-boarding at Sand Harbor, we thought it looked like a fun thing for our family to try.  So the next day, at the beach much closer to our hotel and with a discount from our hotel's concierge, we rented a SUP for an hour.  Dave and I started by taking turns giving the girls rides, but by the end of the hour, everyone had given it their own try.  I'm not generally great at water sports, but I found the stand up paddle-board to be easy, relaxing, easy to control and tons of fun!  

(A quick note about Lake Tahoe's water temp, since you've seen us wearing our bathing suits in most of these pics... Lake Tahoe is said to "never freeze, but never warm up."  While it was cold and not a place I'd like to spend long periods of time deeply submerged in, we found the water to be bearable, especially where it was shallow and when we were hot.  It was really no worse than Lake Michigan.  We were not really expecting to swim so much, so we don't know if we timed our trip just right, or what.) 

(Yep, that's Ella paddling me around a lake again.  I can get used to this.)

Stand up paddle-boarding: yet another first this summer!

Sand Harbor (aka BEST BEACH IN THE WORLD!)

Who would have thought that a beach in Nevada would leap into the top spot of my "All Time Favorite Beaches" List?  It bypasses beaches in Hawaii and the Caribbean, even!  Sand Harbor was about a half hour drive from where we stayed and provided us with our best day in Lake Tahoe this week!

  

I had read that this beach, being one of the most stunning in the world, filled up quickly!  We got there early in the morning and were rewarded with a parking spot and views with virtually no people in them.  And, oh THE VIEWS!  The deep blue of Lake Tahoe gradually melted into this bright green of the Sand Harbor cove.  The water was so clear that every boulder, pebble and fish in the water could be seen.  Surrounding this scenic waterscape was blue skies, green forests and the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Perhaps you can literally see why this is my new favorite beach!

A short walk from the beaches were all these secret swimming holes.  We had to be brave and smart about scaling the giant boulders to enter the pools, but once we got in, the water was shallow, clear, warm, incredible.

We actually ended up spending a full 8 hours on the beach this day!  Besides climbing the rocks and discovering hidden pools, the girls kept busy just playing on the beach.  This beach was packed by mid-morning and mostly with families.  The girls befriended two different groups of kids.  One group of boys brought bait and nets and taught Ella and Delia how to catch crawdads.  The shallow rocky pools made for great hunting grounds and soon a bucket of "little lobsters", as Ella called them, joined our camp in the sand.  Right next to us were two men who built elaborate sand castles for a hobby.  We spent all day watching them use a ton of fancy tools to make a grand castle take shape.  The girls were inspired, but since we left the level and putty knives at home, they had to make do with the standard plastic molds for their design.

And then later in the day, three girls from the Bay Area became Ella and Delia's new Beach BFFs.  Together the 5 girls covered every nearby boulder with "snowballs".  Since this area of California/Nevada is covered by snow for the majority of the year, this was clever and attracted the attention and awe of lots of fellow beach goers.

Beautiful beach views, rock climbing, private swimming holes, new friends and fun beach activities made this the day that caused Lake Tahoe to win my heart.  I now know we'll travel  back to this area and I'd hope to spend at least one day on this amazing beach every summer from here on out!

Emerald Bay

Emerald Bay is a gorgeous blue-green cove off of Lake Tahoe.  When looking for things to do in the area where we were staying, drives, hikes and vista points around this bay were some of the first suggestions to pop up.

The views were magnificent and, indeed, inspiring at Inspiration Point.  This was an Emerald Bay stop we just drove up to.  We ate lunch up here too.

Then we secured a parking spot (no easy task with a large summer crowd!), and took the mile long hike down to the bay.  We started at what felt like the top of the world and ended with our feet in cool water of Emerald Bay.

Along the way we saw little waterfalls and creeks and Ella caught lizards.

It took a good amount of effort to get to the beach at the bottom, so we were surprised to see how hopping it was with swimmers, beach goers and boaters.  We watched them all for a bit while refreshing our feet and then one mile back up the mountain we went.

Yes, Delia is still in the very slooow process of learning to love hiking.  :)

Nice Catch!

Oh how we've tried!  We've taken the girls fishing many times, but have never had the experience amount to anything other than frustration and lessons in patience.  I had read about this Tahoe Trout Farm which is geared towards kids and promises a catch within minutes of dropping a line.  Forget Pinecrest where the fishing is truly a sport, THIS is where we needed to take our kids!  The place provided all the gear, bait and licence for free.  All you had to pay for was what you caught.

The owner, a friendly man named Jim who introduced himself to us as a grandpa, first came to talk to the girls about baiting, fishing, netting and cleaning.  Then he got them a "Tom Sawyer" fishing pole (aka long pole with a bobber and no reel) and showed us around his ponds, pointing out where the bears come to steal his trout!

Dave taught Ella how to bait a hook with the worms she chose.

Then she dropped her line in the small pond stocked with fish.  The water was clear, so we could see each fish who took a nibble.

And sure enough!  Within minutes she had her first catch-- an 11 inch trout which she named, but whose name I've forgotten (for the best, since he was put out of his misery by being clobbered with a metal club shortly after this pic was taken!).

Next up was Delia, who chose salmon eggs as her bait and who caught a 12 inch fish even faster!

After our fish were caught and killed, we brought them to be cleaned.  The girls surprisingly enjoyed watching this process.  They remained calm and happy throughout this experience.  I'm actually shocked, considering there were named and befriended fish hanging dead and gutted on a pole by the end of this morning!

We're catch and release kind of fishermen, but that was not really an option at this farm.  However, they do have this great donation program which still gives you the experience of fishing and then the opportunity to donate the fish you catch and pay for to the local homeless shelter for dinner.  This was a perfect option for us, since we don't really eat fish and weren't particularly interested in keeping dead trout in our lunch cooler all week.

This was a fun morning for us and added another "first" to our Summer of 2013 list: first fish ever caught!

A Last Minute Lake Tahoe Getaway

Last weekend it dawned on Dave that, with school starting and life about to crazy, he would, once again, not use all of his vacation weeks this year.  The week looked light for him, the girls and I have done everything we need to do to be ready for school, and a new area we've never explored beckoned.  So, the day before we left, we did some quick research on the area and booked a place to stay in South Lake Tahoe.  And on the beaches, hiking trails and ski villages of this beautiful blue lake is where we soaked in the last quality time we'll share as a family this summer.  It was a great getaway that held a good mixture of cool things to see and experience, and, as you can probably guess if you are a regular reader of this blog, almost all the activities we found were either cheap or free.

Though booked at the last minute, our hotel was a nice surprise.  It had a wood cabin, rustic sorta thing goin' on.  It was within walking distance of both the beach and the Heavenly Ski Village, so our first few hours in Tahoe were spent exploring these areas.

It had a really nice pool and hot tub area too.  We loved this double-decker waterfall hot tub.  Many fun games were invented here involving the drenching of someone on the bottom level!
 

We ended our first night in Tahoe back on the beach and armed with the camera and tripod trying to get this year's family Christmas card picture.  Above is just a tiny sneak preview.

:) and :(

The countdown is on.  With staff meetings and in-service days starting up for me in about a week and the First Day of School just a week and a half away, we know our summer is winding down.  This is both happy and sad.  We've had another fantastic summer.  But, I'm super excited to start teaching and the girls, Ella especially, will tell you that they are ready and really looking forward to going back.  And the days we spend at home have certainly not been without sibling fighting, time outs, boredom and messes that consume my entire house.  Too many lazy, unstructured days at home make me a little nuts and are why I need at least one outing, a reason to get out of the house for something other than errands, each week.  Dave has been pretty busy, so this week's outing was just us girls.  We found this great "park in a pool" a short drive away.  You can see how much fun this was...

Best part of the day was Delia confidently trying an hour of swimming in the big pool without her floaties.  She was so excited to find that she could keep herself afloat long enough to swim a short distance.  And when she decided that going underwater wasn't scary at all-- look out!  She transformed into a little fish...a little fish who spent the rest of the afternoon cannonballing off the side and calling out "Watch this Mom!" before each underwater dunk and twirl.