Lake Tahoe

We were up and going by 8:30 am. We left Illipah Reservoir and continued west on Hwy 50 to Eureka. We wanted to stop and use the WIFI at the church so I could send the blog posts, but the Eureka branch building ended up being 10-15 miles out of our way, so after about 5 miles we decided to continue in the right direction.

We stopped at the church in Austin, the next town. We parked close to the church, but apparently they have changed the default password, so we could not connect. Both Eureka and Austin are old mining towns and looked similar to Eureka, UT.

We kept driving and finally made it to Fallon. This is a fair sized town with a Walmart and other stores. They have 3 church buildings and we stopped at one and got pretty good WIFI when we sat on the steps of the Family History Center. We stayed about 30 minutes sitting in the shade, until a few ladies came to open the FHC.

We took off and went to Walmart. We ate lunch in the van sitting in the Walmart parking lot. After eating we went shopping and bought some food and a few other things.

From Fallon it was probably 90 minutes to Carson City. This was close to the start of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We topped of the gas tank and continued about 30 more minutes up the mountains to the camping spot we had identified. This was a large sandy lot about 1.5 miles off the highway. We were there with 3 other RVs, but they stayed in their RV and we never saw any of them during the time we were there. Later we determined that we were camping in the middle of the Pondarosa Ranch, from the TV show Bonanza (if it were a real ranch).

We made another Instant Pot meal. The Creamy Alfredo Chicken was pretty good. We ate dinner, cleaned up and then talked and read the rest of the evening.

The night went pretty good. We kept the windows closed, so the temperature inside was just right. By morning another van had pulled in and camped 50 feet from us. They must have come real late and very quietly.

We left early, around 6:30 am and drove the 40 minutes to the Fallen Leaf Campground, just west of South Lake Tahoe City. The camp office did not open until 8 am, but we were the second in line, which was good, because they only had 3 spots open for the night. We were able to get 2 nights for $35/night. It is just a normal Forest Service campground, but it does have showers. This was the cheapest campground at Lake Tahoe.

While waiting for the office to open we met Tom, a guy from central California. He was first in line, but he forgot his wallet, so we lent him $35 so he could pay for his site. We walked over to his campsite so he could repay us. He also told us a few spots to go on our trip on the coast of CA and Oregon.

Since we could not take our site until 2 pm, we headed to the LDS church in South Lake Tahoe. We found it, but our WIFI password for LDS Access did not work. This is the second church that had changed the password from the default. While in the church parking lot we ate breakfast and cleaned up.

Next, we parked in the public parking area and walked the path along the shoreline and through town. We also stopped at the public library and used the internet and bathrooms. On the way back to camp we washed the van the best we could at the car wash. We mainly wanted to get some quarters so we had some quarters to use at the campground showers.

Back at camp we read and talked for a while. We took showers around 4 pm and then cooked dinner later in the evening. Eva made taco soup using the induction cooktop. It took about 10% of the battery power.

The rest of the night we relaxed and read. The sun goes down around 7 pm and it is dark by 8 pm.